The Dream Makers
by S.F.Acronym
Summary: Genies can't grant their own wishes, if it were so then Kurosawa Miyako would be marrying the love of her long existence Sabaku No Gaara and living happily ever after. Instead she had to resign herself to this: "Miyako-chan, I wish for the deaths of every single person you've ever cared about. Especially Sabaku No Gaara."
1. Altered Perceptions

A/N: Yay, Chapter 1! I bet you were all thinking to yourselves: if SFA ends this, I will end her! Luckily for you I love happy endings, and so here's the sequel along with a warning for you all: Gaara will be hardly mentioned for the next few chapters. There, I said it! I'm sorry. Please don't wish more death upon me.

Alright, reviewer love time!

Flatwaffles29: Uhhh…Thanks please don't kill me? I like that you were up at three in the morning for little ole me though. Makes me feel special, maybe you'll feel better by the end of this chapter…or worse once you find out who the new master is. I wouldn't know, it depends on your preferences really.

Night Kaminari: I think you're confusing my vague description of Miyako for a vague description of the new master. Let me make it clear to everyone that I gave out no hint as to who the master was save for his gender…if you haven't guessed he's a guy. Good guesses though.

Kuesuno: Thank you for your very mild death threats, Miyako and I appreciate that you don't have enough drive to main us and thank you for your obedience.

TMC-Yuki: Did you want it to be done? Well too bad, it aint over till Gaara gets some lovin! At least enough for me anyway, although right now he may get more angsty than anything…

jus4theheckofit98: Yeah…right, I need to finish the story remember, so I'll just drag it on for a while…that way you won't have time to kill me!

Red X17: Happy? Sad? Non-murderous? That last one would be great. :/

Waterflygirl: You and I need to have a PM session…because you're great.

Guest: At least you won't murder me.

Guest2: Uh…the second option?

Alyce DreamEater: I just looked over it…and realized that I did indeed put "the seventh wish". Sorry if that confused a lot of people, I will fix that along with the thousands of other problems in this story sometime soon. You get a cookie for catching that :), it makes my job so much easier. As for the guessing of the new master thing…if I'd given you guys a hint that would've been too easy :). But if you guys disagree, think of it this way, I gave out a vague hint of his disposition, or at least I thought so.

GMNASAI: Sorry, no sequels…although if I really wanted to I could pronounce "The Wishful Thinker" over huh? And then make another story with a separate title…actually…

And now on with the story, oh Miyako?

Miyako: -miserable- Yeah, SFA doesn't own _Naruto_. She'll never own _Naruto_ because _Naruto _is an unattainable dream for her, okay?!

SFA: O.O I feel like Miyako isn't talking about me anymore…

Inside the thought quotes, the **bold** is Miyako's master's implanted voice and the regular print is her own thoughts.

The _**bold italics**_ are memories.

Oh well, onwards!

Altered Perceptions

Gaara's ninja skills were certainly lacking at the appearance of Miyako Maki, and just when he thought he had regained some sense, her ever fading figure and gentle but searing forehead kiss had sent him right back into a frozen state where he'd started.

It was only lucky for him that Temari and Kankuro were much faster in their recovery.

"Kankuro, gather the nearest Jounin or ANBU and pursue her, now!"

The man didn't even bother to ask the obvious questions of where she had gone or even how he was to track her, he just mechanically carried out his orders, mind still reeling.

"Gaara-" Temari implored when the teen still wouldn't move from his frozen state.

It took the touch of her hand to his forehead to snap him out of his trance, the cool feeling of her skin a sharp contrast to the burning that still lingered on his love scar where Miyako had given him his parting gift.

"Temari have a letter written to Konoha demanding the unearthing of Maki Miyako's grave immediately."

"Of course." She hastened to carry out his demands, internally sighing with relief at the reappearance of his old nature, but a thought stopped her at the door.

"Are you going to be okay?" She murmured, turning back to him expectantly.

He almost replied too quickly, "Yes", something that translated into "don't push the topic any farther." She didn't, but that didn't mean that she couldn't really decipher what was underneath that tone.

"Miyako, what have you done?"

G/M

"Miyako-chaaaaan~!"

The woman stopped in her trek through the hallway to look for said man, waiting patiently until he grew ever closer and steeled herself enough not to be knocked over by his tackle-hug.

It was amazing how being Gaara's master prepared her in shielding her annoyance, it wouldn't do well to piss off her new master after only being with him a few days, although his new continuous antics were not appreciated.

"Tobi, just because Miyako-chan can stand your obnoxious racket doesn't mean that I will, un!" And the child-like male was then sent sprawling to the floor sporting a large knot on his head courtesy of his blonde-haired partner, who was right behind him.

Miyako was also glad that she could rein in all of her other emotions as well, lest her new master be annoyed with her twitch of a smile.

She obediently helped Tobi up as he whined at Deidara; and rubbed the bump soothingly to shut him up, instantly healing it.

Deidara grumbled lightly at the show, but was gladder that Tobi shut up than anything. He couldn't hide his curiosity for long though and began to question the stoic looking woman.

"How did you get stuck serving a brat like Tobi anyway Miyako-chan, un?"

Miyako looked at Deidara upon his inquiry, but didn't answer straight away, only looked boredly at him and then the ever-distracted Tobi before shrugging noncommittally.

"Well at least you don't talk much, un. If only your demeanor could rub off on Tobi, yeah."

Tobi came back at the mention of his name and gleefully latched onto Deidara's arm. "Deidara-sempai~, you're so mean to me! We have to stay close to each other on this mission, which means that we should be best buddies, Deidara-sempai!"

Deidara growled and shook the obnoxious man attached to his arm until he fell once again on his rump. "Not going to happen Tobi, un! I'd rather spend days locked up with Miyako-chan, at least she's useful and doesn't talk, two things you should learn from her yeah!"

"Sempai's so mean! Miyako-chan does talk, don't you Miyako-chan? In fact you'd like to know what the mission is, wouldn't you!?" Tobi cheered excitedly.

"What is the mission, Tobi-sama?" Miyako asked quietly as expected of her.

"See Sempai! I told you! My Miyako-chan does talk~."

"To answer your question-" Deidara groused as Tobi began to prance around Miyako in a stupid little victory dance. "We're supposed to go and capture the Sanbi, un. More importantly you're idiot of a master is supposed to capture the Sanbi in order to prove himself, yeah."

Miyako nodded to Deidara before Tobi consumed all of her attention again. "So let's go Miyako-chan! You can help Tobi capture Sanbi-chan~."

With that being said he grabbed the emotionless girl's hand to tow her away, Deidara right behind them protesting about Miyako's assistance in the matter with lots of 'uns' to punctuate his frustrations.

G/M

Gaara was sitting in his office filling out paperwork and giving orders mechanically, his thoughts in other places, more specifically on certain un-dead people.

Was it natural for one's forehead to tingle even days after a kiss? Gaara had to wonder what sort of jutsu Miyako had placed on him that could alter his every thought in her direction. It might've been acceptable if he were solely thinking thoughts of betrayal, but more often than naught he found himself lingering on the almost apologetic look on the fading face of his former guardian. Questions sprung from this one millisecond, why did she look that way? Could she have really used Gaara as he was really debating? And if she really had used Gaara, to what end did she strive for?

It proved to be a subject that brought on a constant headache to his already tingling head, and he only wished that someone was parading around as Miyako if only to rid himself of this confusion.

G/M

"Deidara-sempai, Deidara-sempai~, Deidara-sempai!"

"TOBI-"

'I wonder how Gaara is doing,' Miyako thought to herself, completely filtering out Deidara and Tobi's fighting, again.

'**It shouldn't matter to you how Gaara is doing**,' A darker, more hardened version of herself berated, '**you belong to Tobi now, Gaara's wellbeing means nothing to you anymore**.'

'But still, I feel as if I owe him at least an explanation. It was cowardly of me to…kiss and run.'

'**You cannot doubt the decisions you have made now**!' The voice, which was rapidly starting to take on a darker and more masculine purr, snapped unrepentantly. '**Everything has fallen into place, you cannot change the past. And why would you want to? It's not as if Gaara shared the same love for you as you previously had for him.'**

She did not miss the similarities between that dark, sinful hiss and her master's voice when he wasn't playing the fool. She also did not miss its poignant use of the past tense, Tobi…or rather Obito had made it very clear the day she was bound to him that Miyako was his property. Being that she was his property she was not allowed to think of things, fondly or otherwise, that reminded her of her past, specifically, Sabaku No Gaara. But since he couldn't "control her womanish emotions", as he so put it, forcefully or within his own desires, he claimed to be a generous man, he used his first of thirty wishes to instead make her face physically emotionless.

This might've worked out for the better if she hadn't dazedly looked off into space for the first fourth of their trip to Ame. Obito was perceptive, she expected no less from an Uchiha of his insane caliber, and quickly realized that Miyako was purposely being silent not just because she despised him in more ways than one, but because she was thinking about Suna, Konoha, all of the people she betrayed and mostly Gaara.

Uchiha's, she was quickly reminded, were possessive when it came to their possessions. She was also quickly reminded of how much she hated them when Obito tried to order her to stop thinking about Gaara and then others. Foolishly, she tried to rebel only to result in Obito wishing that she followed his every command and then proceeded to order her into a mindless state of being for a half of the trip.

When he ordered her back into conscious thought she made sure not to displease him into any rash decision for the rest of the journey to Ame, where she met Pein and Konan.

G/M

"I don't like this, Obito." Pein had grunted after Miyako had civilly bowed following her introduction and then deigned to look at scenery while pretending she was deaf as Obito ordered.

"I didn't come here to get your permission, Nagato." Obito chuckled in dark humor. "Only to inform you of her presence so you're not taken by surprise, as is common courtesy."

"How do we know she can be trusted?" Konan mumbled softly, darting her eyes to a melancholy looking Miyako briefly before regarding Obito dubiously again.

"Trust me," he purred, giving the two subtle shivers, "I've got her wrapped around my finger."

"Miyako!" He snapped before the two could question him further.

"Hai Obito-sama?" She droned obediently.

"Teleport us to the base near water country, and you'll avoid loopholes if you know what's good for you."

"Hai Obito-sama." Miyako stretched out her hand and clasped it firmly onto Obito's arm.

"You will call me Tobi from now on." He was addressing all three in this statement, his tone warring between amusement and warning.

"Hai Tobi-sama." And then the two were gone.

"I have a bad feeling about that girl, Pein." Konan looked fretfully at her partner's blank looking face.

"I am less worried about her, and more worried about "Tobi"". He sneered, but as always, the two resigned themselves to the puppet master's grip.

G/M

Meeting the other members, dangerous S-ranked criminals, was not as nerve-wracking as the façade of Tobi had tried to make it seem.

"They must be so upset Miyako-chan~, after all Sasori-kun, Kakuzu-kun and Hidan-chan have all just died and Tobi-kun and Miyako-chan~ are replacing them. What if they hate you Miyako-chan?! Just like all of your former friends and Gaara?!"

Her countenance did not betray her feelings of guilt and rage. Although on some level she felt she deserved this cruel punishment, Tobi was being unnecessarily cruel to the point where her former loathing of him was turned to full blown hatred. Wasn't it enough for him that he was inherently hated and feared for being evil? But no, Uchiha's were control freaks and since he couldn't win any positive emotions from her he had to instill in her negative emotions to feel empowered, and it was working, at least in his head.

"…_**having hatred for your master**____**will make you less powerful."**_

That was the only comfort Miyako had in this situation; that Obito wasn't aware that her hatred for him made her magic below her potential. And the more she hated him the more her power levels fell beneath her master's.

'Karma's a bitch.' She thought humorlessly.

In any case the first person she met was Deidara, the only other person on the face of the earth who hated "Tobi" with as much bane as she did, although not for the same justified reasons. The introduction went something like this:

"DIEDARA-SEMPAI~~!"

She felt sorry for the blonde haired man at first meeting; anyone who could cause "Tobi" to use two affectionate squiggles after their name and to yell must have the worst luck in the world, that is until he opened his mouth.

"TOBI, STOP SHOUTING IN MY EAR, UN!"

And then she realized that they belonged together.

They heedlessly argued about pointless things for a few minutes, giving Miyako time to properly brood over her situation.

'Well let's see, one I am no longer Gaara's genie. Two, I am no longer Gaara's genie and I never even told him in the first place that I was his genie. Three, I lied to Gaara. Four, I am now under the servitude of a madman who is bent on ruling all the nations by killing nine people in order to resurrect the Ten-Tails. Five, this madman is an Uchiha. Six, he has already killed half of the nine Jinchuriki, including Gaara. Seven, I just realized that this goddamn Uchiha is the reason Gaara was killed and now I'm going to be responsible for the deaths of other people. Eight, specifically I am most likely going to be somehow responsible for the death of all of my precious people, including but not all inclusive to Gaara, Naruto and Kakashi.'

That was when the mantra of "fuck my life" was born and was repeated over and over and over in Miyako's head.

"Ah, I almost forgot about you Miyako-chan~! Deidara-sempai, this is my servant Miyako-chan, Miyako-chan this Deidara-sempai!"

Since she still wasn't allowed to talk she just nodded curtly at him while he looked quizzically at her.

"Servant, un? How unfortunate for you to be serving this idiot Miyako-san, un."

While she couldn't say anything out loud she did cackle mischievously in her head while Tobi complained loudly.

"You're so mean Deidara-sempai~!"

'If you think he's so mean then why do you still use that stupid squiggle at the end of his name?' Miyako snorted to herself.

"GO SOMEWHERE WITH YOURSELF BAKA!"

"Waaaah!"

Miyako dragged Tobi away when it looked like Deidara would violently attack him and into a living room where several people stopped what they were doing to stare at them.

She observed one with strange blue skin, a fleeing half white half black man, and..

'No fucking way, you've got to be shitting me!' She cursed inwardly, and she knew without question that her carefully placed indifference was slipping as she felt her left eye twitch.

Why do you ask is Miyako twitching? It's because she had to deal with another effing Uchiha!

'Isn't the entire Uchiha clan supposed to be dead? So why the hell are three still running around and ruining my life?!'

"Miyako-chan, this is the rest of the Akatsuki! The shark looking man is Kisame-kun, the oreo looking one is Zetsu-chan and the grumpy looking one is Itachi-chan!"

Kisame waved at her cheerfully before turning his attention back to some program on sharks that he was watching, Zetsu hardly made eye contact while Itachi couldn't _stop_ looking at her. And it was freaking her out!

"You might want to stay away from Itachi-chan, Miyako-chan~" Tobi stage whispered dramatically into her ear.

"Well then everyone, ja! We're going into my room to play games! What do you want to play Miyako-chan~?" He yelled cheerfully as he towed her away. "Whatever you want to play Tobi-sama." She answered back dully as they walked into a shadowy hallway.

He said nothing as they made their way down winding dark pathways until they arrived at a door. He flung it open to reveal a plain room with toys that they probably weren't even going to play with scattered aimlessly around the king sized bed.

It wasn't until he shut the door that he spoke.

"Zetsu." It was his deep voice, his real one and the "Oreo" looking man as he had described him heeded his call, appearing from the floor as if he was a part of it.

'I get the feeling that we're definitely not going to play games.' Miyako thought gravely.

G/M

That was a week ago and now she Deidara and Tobi were trekking through the forest that would take them to a lake that would allow them to capture the Sanbi, who was apparently host-less and swimming around in this lake living peacefully with the other creatures.

Why they felt the need to disturb the monster was beyond her comprehension, but then again she had never attempted to look at things on the eviler side of life, so…

"Miyako-chan~ let's get dango!" Tobi cried in her ear, effectively breaking her of her thoughts as she suspected he intended to all along.

"Hai." She replied, following her energetic master at a slower pace.

"Oi, Tobi you don't even look exhausted un." Deidara grumbled to himself as the two sat down to eat.

A kind old lady came out smiling and received a blank look, a swirly mask and a grumpy look respectively. "I'll just bring out some dango, would all three of you like some?" She offered.

"Miyako-chan would not, she doesn't like dango, right Miyako-chan~?" Tobi exclaimed before looking at her expectantly.

"Yes, I do not enjoy sweets."

'The biggest lie I've ever told in my life if there was one! Stupid Uchiha bastards and their bastard-ish ways!' She raged inside her head.

So the lady brought out the prepared dango and placed it beside them, and that is when she noticed Deidara looking intently at Tobi, almost as if-

'He's trying to catch a glimpse of the face hidden underneath the mask.' She thought mirthfully, and although she hated Obito with a passion she still had pretenses to keep up and responsibilities to uphold. So she sat down in the empty space between them while Tobi happily munched on his dango. Miyako could see that Deidara was miffed.

'Trust me, if I had the chance I'd let you expose this guy, but alas…'

Tobi meanwhile said something stupid to rile Deidara up yet again and forced Miyako to scoop him up and run off with him to avoid being hit.

"What did you say to him?" She droned as they ran at a break-neck speed away from the shouting Deidara.

"Only the truth." He cackled viciously and Miyako didn't' bother to question him any longer.

G/M

They were halfway there when Miyako froze suddenly in their journey, her heart beating wildly in her chest as she detected several presences near the lake, familiar presences

"Miyako-chan~?" Tobi sounded worried, but in reality he was really asking what she'd sensed.

"No, it's nothing…" She answered expectedly, because it would look suspicious if she said it with Deidara around listening, so she'd have to wait until they made camp.

'No, no, no! Kabuto and Orochimaru's thugs I can deal with, but the Leaf ninja as well, and not just any Leaf ninja, but Sunshine and Kakashi-nee? Obito would assuredly take advantage of this rare opportunity and force me to fight them under the guise of the ignorance of Tobi. I can't bear to face them now, not ever. I can just picture the looks of betrayal on their faces…'

She had apparently agonized over it for so long that she didn't even notice when they'd set up camp, Tobi was just all of the sudden towing her off into the woods to catch fish in the stream nearby.

"You seem more out of it than usual today, which can only mean that you've discovered great news about Sanbi. So tell me Miyako-chan~, who is it exactly that's at the lake?"

This was all said in his natural, dangerous voice, and Miyako could hardly suppress a shiver at the way it caressed her name, or more like suffocated it.

"Kabuto-" She started, but was cut off at a vicious laugh from her master.

"You know I could care less about Kabuto, you could care less about Kabuto." He chided jovially with a dark snort at the end. "No, I want to know who you _really_ care about. I want to know the names of the people that made you stop short in the middle of the forest and almost break that beautiful indifferent mask I have given you."

'Fuck my life.' She groaned once in her head before her mouth complied with his demands.

"Inuzuka Kiba, Aburame Shino, Hyuga Hinata, Yamanaka Ino, Tenten, Rock Lee, Sai, Haruno Sakura, Tenzou Yamato, Hatake Kakashi," she winced as his name left her mouth, but that made the experience that much more exciting for Obito.

"And Uzumaki Naruto."

The evil chuckle that left Obito's mouth made her want to crawl in a hole and just die a million times over.

"So Orochimaru's thugs verses the Leaf ninja, huh?"

She said nothing in confirmation or in denial, she just hoped that for their sake she and Obito didn't catch them in their journey.

G/M

"Kazekage-sama."

Gaara looked up to find Fox and Weasel in front of him, a scroll from Konoha in their hands.

'That is the answer to all my questions, the scroll that will determine Miyako's validity.' Gaara thought.

"Any other news?" He grunted as the scroll was passed over to him.

"Hokage-sama expressed confusion at your motives of digging up the body again, but otherwise had no other objections." Fox reported.

This would be the second time, he recalled, the first being when Temari had made him to do it with no clear explanation. Now that he remembered this particular instance he'd have to question his sister on what she knew; he only hoped that it wasn't anything particularly important that she'd neglected to inform him, out of protection or otherwise.

Meanwhile as Fox reported this Gaara had read over the scroll and after interpreting the code at least ten times, was brought to even more confusion and turmoil.

'Her body is missing from the grave.' The sentence seemed to echo in his head.

There were suggestions from the Hokage of what the cause of this might be, but Gaara didn't' have the heart to read them at the moment.

'Miyako…' He thought as his scar tingled anew, 'what happened to you?'

G/M

"Tobi your information was false, un."

It was midday near the lake containing the Sanbi, and Miyako was praising God and jumping for joy inside her head, unbeknownst to the rest of her party.

"Ah, well it seemed to be a reliable source." He pretended to look apologetically at the two, but mostly he was glaring at Miyako when he'd turned to her.

"But anyway Sempai, this is good now we can collect our quota without any interference!" Tobi cheered optimistically.

Deidara scoffed, obviously looking for a good fight, but resigned himself to doing his job.

"Shut up, un! You're not going to be giving me orders, baka!" Deidara growled before making a giant clay bird to hop on top of.

"Wait sempai! What about the hallucinations?!" Tobi yelled after him, feigning concern.

"Baka, don't underestimate my art, un!" Deidara yelled and flew over the mist.

The two watched him fly away, one still thanking the heavens in their head and the other scoffing at the boy in his head.

"Tch foolish child." He turned to Miyako who regarded him blankly.

"So it looks like you got lucky, what with your friends escaping before we arrived, but Miyako-chan~" He purred in his real voice, making her eye him warily.

"Your hopes have only managed to momentarily prolong their lifespan. When I'm done with these preliminary plans, you'll be wishing I had killed them here."

Obito talked more of entertaining himself with his normal shenanigans of irritating Deidara, and for her to play along with it, but she barely registered it over her own beating heart.

G/M

"Did you see that Sempai! All I had to do was one jutsu and BAM, Sanbi was out like a light!" Tobi cheered from atop the giant three tailed turtle.

Miyako stood expressionlessly next to him as he bragged unnecessarily.

'But really when I think on it, I think he derives great pleasure out of causing other people pain or irritation. I don't think he can function unless he threatens me at least five times a day and irritates Deidara at least twenty. Poor us.'

"Baka, un!" Deidara screeched from atop his bird as they tugged the monster along as if he was a tugboat, "You forgot that my art and Miyako's vigilance in serving your idiotic ass did most of the work, un!"

That was true, Obito was having too much fun pretending to be the fool to be competent enough not to get himself "drowned" and so Miyako had to keep darting him around and saving him while Deidara had to keep throwing bombs.

Although she could also admit that what they'd done was child's play compared to the powerful jutsu "Tobi" had used to knock the monster out. Deidara may not have seem it's magnitude, but she had and if anything it had succeeded in instilling even more fear into Miyako's heart.

And she was allied with it; she would be right there beside Obito as the whole world fell into ruin unless she thought of something, anything that could save them all.

'**That would take a miracle**.' She thought bitterly as she looked upon the dramatic "sleeping" face of her master, who she could feel was smiling nastily at her as if he could read her thoughts.

G/M

**Whooo sequels! Many things to address here at the end so here we go! **

**1: Yeah, I made a sequel even though I said I wouldn't, but it's not like you guys had to wait forever, right? So there's no need to even be angry. **

**2: Congratulations to the winners of the master guessing contest: **

**Alyce DreamEater**

**GMNASAI: You said Uchiha, so I'm going to give it to you. **

**waterflygirl: Seriously, about the rest of your review…we need to have a chat, lol. :) **

**Night Kaminari: Luckily you put the Uchihas in there. **

**and**

**TMC-Yuki**

**3: That means all the aforementioned winners get to submit an idea to me, see chapter 17 in The Wishful Thinker for the rules! **

**Well, I think that's it, I hope you guys enjoy The Dream Makers! **

**Bye bye!**

**Superb, Futuristic, Acronym. **


	2. Bearing Baring All

A/N: Yay, chapter 2 is here! How are you enjoying Miyako's misery my pretties? Is it to your satisfaction? Well the pain will only continue in this chapter appropriately named "Bearing/Baring all. Ps. that means that there will mentions of rape and psychological torture in this chapter, if that makes you uncomfortable then just skip all of the Obito/ Miyako parts. Anyway, on to the reviewer love!

Red X17: Could you…maybe not? I don't want to be maimed, then how will you find out what happens to our dear Miyako?

Kuesuno: In my mind Gaara's sort of dense, not as dense as our adorable main character Naruto is at times, but dense enough to where he'll believe it's something else rather than connect it back to his past.

Alyce DreamEater: Yeah, you're going to hate him even more after this chapter is over…just saying.

jus4theheckofit98: You're welcome. The greatness will only continue I hope.

anonymous: Obito gets 30 wishes because, by my estimation, he is thirty years old. I forgot to mention this last chapter, but since my most reliable database doesn't provide an age for Obito I just guestimated that he was around or the same age as Kakashi considering they were on the same team. Gaara, when he found Miyako, was five, so he only gets five wishes. Theoretically both Gaara and Obito could wish for more wishes, but Obito's wished for her to follow his every order which is essentially the same thing and Gaara forgot about her after forcing her back inside the lamp, hell he still isn't even aware that she's a genie, so there was no way for him to wish for more wishes. I feel like that's a longer answer to your question than necessary. Also, thanks for the love :).

TMC-Yuki: Teehee, you will just have to wait and see my darling. Mwhahahaha. And yes, you won! :).

ILOVEANIME123: I'll see what I can do about that, tee hee. ;)

Quoted: Indeed, he is not.

GMNASAI: …I think I'm going to have to write a side story for you explaining all this, because you seem to be confused about a lot of things…anyway thanks for the review(s).

Sky65: Your wish is my command, and you will just have to wait and see how it turns out just like everybody else.

Anyway, on with the story, oh but first we have a word from our sponsor!

Miyako: Screw you SFA! You torturing me is the exact reason you don't own _Naruto_. In fact, you and your mistreatment of your characters will assure that you _never_ own _Naruto_. So take that!

SFA: Okay…so Miyako's mad at me for reasons that you will now see in this story! Enjoy!

Bearing/Baring All

Tobi did vicious things to Miyako when he was bored.

For instance, when Deidara managed to hide himself particularly well one day, Tobi thought it would be fun to test the limits of Miyako's pain.

"Think of it," He drawled as he sank another kunai slowly into her arm, "as a preparation of war. I need to know how useful you're going to be to me."

On the outside she wasn't allowed to scream, he did allow her to make faces as he stabbed her, but no noise. He was still trying to put up the front of a "good master" to the others.

On the inside she was raving and screaming, not only in physical pain but in emotional turmoil, especially when Tobi would coo that he would do this same thing to Gaara when given the chance.

But physical wounds healed, hers particularly fast, the true torture was his verbal assaults and the thoughts he caused her imagination to stir up.

That became his new favorite game when Deidara somehow escaped him, alternating between physical torture; his excuses ranged from the need to protect from Ninjutsu, ninja tools, etc, to mental torture, his favorite most of all was Tsukiyomi, but instead of her suffering 72 hours of pain she was chained up and forced to watch Gaara suffer 72 hours of pain.

At first it was hard enough to watch, but then Tobi grew bored of her just crying out in pain and actually allowed her to be unchained to touch the vivid hallucination Gaara, only to fail in causing him any relief. This happened a few times, only growing progressively worse each time, but it was nothing compared to the first time Tobi made hallucination-Gaara speak.

His voice was like water to her dehydrated body that was burning in the desert. That flat lull that she was so obsessed with, that she had suffered a week without, was finally speaking to her again, and it didn't matter that it was all to fuel a fantasy.

Of course it wasn't there to make her feel better, at least not in the end goal.

"Shh, shh, Gaara, I'm sorry. Shh, I promise it'll be okay." She sobbed, despite the fact that she knew it wasn't really Gaara, just the thought of this happening to him sent her into a frenzied state. No, the deadly _promise_ of this happening to him practically drove her mad with grief, guilt and rage.

"M-miyako." He panted after the pain lulled.

It was a complete shock; she froze appropriately at the sound and looked up dumbfounded at the still pained looking face of her love.

"G-Ga-" She choked, emotions warring between happiness and wariness.

"Miyako, I-" A cough cut his precious words short. Miyako, who was kneeling unknowingly at his feet, watched transfixed as a drop of blood trickled from his heaving lips, rolled down his chin and dripped until it was gone from her vision.

The feeling of a warm wet liquid falling down her face snapped her out of her reverie and sent her into a spasmodic state as per her nature.

She lunged up clutching his face gently in her hands while urging him to stay silent with whispered hisses and "I know Gaara, don't speak, you're in pain."

"No," He rasped, shaking his head out of her grasp, "I need-"

"What is it? I'll get whatever you need."

His face, which had been previously looking down, snapped up to her suddenly with a vicious look in those gorgeous seafoam eyes.

"Get away from me." He hissed, the sudden movement sending waves of pain throughout his body.

She shook her head, misinterpreting his aggressive nature to be concern for her, "Gaara-"

"I said get away from me, I hate you!"

Miyako shrunk back as if slapped, eyes wide in disbelief as her hallucination-Gaara sat there seething.

"It's your fault!" He yelled this time much stronger, "I hate you!"

"Stop…" She cried. "I didn't mean to, please believe me." She reached out a shaking hand to appease him somehow but his hateful glare had her retreating once again.

"You killed them!"

"Stop…no. Gaara-"

Suddenly the sentiments seem to come from all sides; all in Gaara's beautiful voice to assault her with the interchanging phrases of "you killed them" "it's your fault" but worst of all "I hate you."

"STOP!" She screamed, curling in on herself to escape her truth, her past and her future.

"That's it Miyako-chan~, ingrain that image in your mind. Gaara hates you, just like the rest of them. I can't have you loving the enemy after all, but just in case the message hasn't gotten through yet, we will do this every day until it does." Obito purred before leaving her there to dwell in her own nightmares.

G/M

Gaara couldn't believe it, he refused to.

In between his fingers was the Hokage's letter informing him of the possible reasons for Miyako's missing body.

There was the obvious, that Miyako had lied to them all by faking her death, brilliantly he might add, to escape execution from either Suna or Konoha.

'But then why would she travel all the way back here to pose as my head ANBU?'

Thinking about the ramifications of that just made his head hurt, so he moved on to other matters, like the second reason.

The Edo Tensei, otherwise known as the Impure Reanimation Jutsu.

'But for what purpose would someone have in reanimating Miyako, to gather valuable information from us? It's plausible, but I have to hear what Temari says, the original reason for requesting the unearthing of Miyako's body could lead us in a different direction.'

Just then Temari knocked on the door and Gaara, eager to solve this puzzling mystery, hastly invited her inside.

"You wanted to see me?" He motioned her to take a seat as an answer and then proceeded to stare her down as if he could receive all truth by suddenly developing mind reading abilities.

"Why did you order Miyako's body unearthed the first time?" It was better to be frank with Sabaku's, they didn't believe in beating around the bush.

Temari though seemed to be edging around the answer nervously, almost as if she didn't understand the reputation of their name…

"Temari." He only had so much patience to demand once.

She sighed in defeat. "Naruto didn't want me to tell you…"

His implied raised eyebrow urged her to continue, though he was still trying to digest why Naruto would want to keep…well _anything_ from him.

"The day…Ichibi was extracted from you…Miyako's _something_, ghost, spirit whatever, appeared and starting attacking everyone. I only debate what it was because at first they could not hit it with physical attacks, but while Chiyo-san was healing you something happened and the ghost became vulnerable to physical attacks and even started talking and then it just…chipped away, seemingly dying."

Gaara didn't say anything for several seconds, which wasn't really a surprise considering he didn't talk much anyway, but Temari knew her brother and could feel the acute change in his demeanor as he tried to take it all in.

"That doesn't sound characteristic of the Edo Tensei." He finally murmured.

"Kakashi-sensei didn't think so either, he included in his report a theory that it was a less sophisticated version of the Edo Tensei, although we've never heard of such a thing."

"And if it was Edo Tensei that still begs the question of _who_ used it and for what purpose." Gaara shared aloud, hoping that it could somehow inspire his sister with an answer that was escaping him.

"I don't know Gaara," she sighed, "all of this is too much to take in in my opinion. When we think on it we know absolutely nothing about Maki Miyako except what she told us, and even then that could be a lie. No one's ever heard of her in the village aside from the elders, and it's not like our father is alive for us to question whether or not she was really working under him."

It seemed that even answers brought on more questions, questions Gaara didn't want to deal with; questions that forced him to analyze the one relationship he was just starting to accept.

'I just wanted to be understood, cared for, loved…Miyako wherever you are I just hope you know that I'm sorry, and that I wish you'd just come back to me.'

G/M

As if Miyako's days with Obito weren't hard enough as it was, the other two Uchiha's kept popping up to deal out more stress to her than necessary.

While Obito would torture her relentlessly when bored, furious, sometimes even content, Itachi just…stared.

And yet it wasn't _just_ staring, she knew that Uchiha's didn't just _stare_. She knew that Itachi was formulating some sort of plan around her; he was measuring her and analyzing her within an inch of her life, she just couldn't figure out the purpose.

She couldn't be too put out by his staring though, because while he stared at her with a calculating gaze, she was also staring at him. She never looked at Itachi with ulterior motives though, she was only trying to figure out what made him tick. He didn't seem to hate her, unlike the other two Uchiha she knew, he didn't seem to particularly _like_ her either though, just like the two other Uchiha she knew too, he just seemed…unperturbed by her presence or more strangely, if she was reading him right, contented by her presence.

She doubted that that was the case, why would an Uchiha, much less the supposed murderous Itachi Uchiha, be affected by her presence at all? Why would he be content with it was an even better question?

While she was on that topic of death and destruction there was a key ingredient about Itachi that just didn't fit the image painted of him, and that was the murderous aura she'd seen in other killers that were supposedly a similar case. Itachi just seemed to lack an unquenched bloodlust that she'd observed in ninja, hell even Gaara for a time, he mostly radiated, well, grief. It was a curious thing to process, Itachi, an Uchiha and murderer of his own clan, the very reason Sasuke harbored hate in his heart and possessor of the most powerful technique of the Uchiha the Mangekyo Sharingan, was plagued not by the haughtiness of his former fellow clansmen or the smugness of having killed them all, but sadness.

Miyako was generally a good judge of character, or at least she'd like to think she was, and if she was right there was more to Itachi than a former ANBU turned crazed killer. It was only matter of finding out what that more was.

To add to the frustration of the bastard-ness of Obito and the mystery that was Itachi, talk of the wayward Sasuke Uchiha sprung up and the news seemed caught between comforting and aggravating for her master.

"He has killed Orochimaru." Obito announced out of the blue whilst they were alone in his room as he stroked her hair. He seemed to have an odd fascination with her hair.

She instinctively knew that he wanted her opinion, but not just any opinion, the right opinion, and so she had to choose her words carefully.

"This is good, is it not?" He certainly couldn't have wanted Sasuke to remain in the hands of the pedophilic snake; after all he was his relative and though she doubted he cared out of some sort of sibling love Sasuke could prove to be beneficial to his plans.

"Zetsu tells me that he has joined up with three other little misfits in an effort to hunt down Itachi."

"You think that they will trace Itachi here and will impede with your plans?"

"No." His fist tightened in her hair, sending uncomfortable shocks of pain rocketing down her spine that ripped a groan from her throat.

"Itachi is no threat to me or Tsuki No Me; he has been waiting for his death for nearly a decade, he will meet Sasuke to insure his plans for him are completed."

"And you are sure that these are not against your own?"

She knew that it was the wrong question to ask when her face met the floor and then she was painfully pulled up by her hair to face the rapidly spinning Sharingan that communicated her master's fury.

Her panic surfaced at the thought of being forced back into the horrible illusions of Gaara dying and hating her, but she did not expect to be thrown back onto the bed and secured with chakra string to the headboard.

"Tell me Miyako-chan~, and give your honest answer please, are you plotting to use Itachi as a means for escape? Is that why you've been looking at him so closely?"

"N-no." She croaked, shifting uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Oh? But you are plotting to somehow escape me aren't you?"

She moved her head to say no, but at the appearance of a kunai from Obito's cloak and the prompt to say only the truth she was forced to admit that she didn't want to stay with him.

"Ah, is that so? Why do you wish to escape me Miyako-chan~ your master?"

"You're an Uchiha and I'm afraid of you. You mean to rob the world of free will and you abuse me-" She listed but paused out of necessity when a kunai was suddenly thrust into her heart.

She couldn't very well scream, she still wasn't allowed to express any emotion, but she'd be damned if she wasn't screaming in her head.

"Do you feel that pain Miyako-chan~? That is what you do to my heart when you lie to me." To demonstrate further he twisted the kunai deeper into the organ; delighting in the red substance spilling forth and the spasm that came along with the action.

"B-but," She coughed blood pluming from her lips as her lungs filled with the liquid.

"I want the real reason you choose to silently defy me Miyako-chan~ and none of those bullshit excuses."

"B-because you took me away from my friends-" She gasped between bloody coughs, more blood spilling forth from her wound and her mouth, unfortunately these words made matters worse as the knife was plunged deeper into her heart and Obito's hand was knuckle deep in her blood.

"Say his name." Obito prompted in a vicious snarl.

"Gaara," she gasped finally, coughing blood on Obito's mask that covered sadistic glee, "you took me away from Gaara."

The knife was then pulled out of her skin with a sickening squelch. Obito carelessly tossed the bloody object to the ground to focus instead on Miyako's steadily blanching face; caressing his fingers softly from her temple to her jaw as he whispered.

"Why do you treat me with such disdain Miyako-chan~? Why do you blame me when all I tried to do was help you?"

He cupped her jaw and stroked her lips red as he continued to speak in a hurt tone.

"I took you in when Gaara did not believe in you, when you were weak and dying because of him. I took you away from your self-imposed suffering to give you a chance at a better life and _this_ is how you repay me?"

He tightened his hold on her jaw and shoved his thumb in her mouth as his voice dropped to a chilling degree.

"Defying orders, questioning my authority and worst of all loving that _scum_." Her heart wrenched at the word while her tongue raised itself against his thumb to protest, but he pushed it down steadfastly.

"But if that is what you desire, than I will give it to you. I will show you what a relationship with that monster would be like."

Then she was looking into sea foam eyes instead of a swirling mask and the illusion had her breathlessly fooled.

Obito had him down almost perfect, the bright red hair, the subtle eyes, peachy pink lips against alabaster skin that stretched over a thin frame, the only thing out of place was…

The crazed tilt of the lips.

The image shattered of her love and her slowly mending heart beat painfully at the reminder that the person in front of her was not Gaara, _it_ was a monster.

"I will break you of this false love and remind you who you belong to." _It_ said in Gaara's voice, the grin stretching wider if possible.

Pain met the side of her face and it took the sudden change in angle for Miyako to realize that the imposter Gaara had slapped her, _hard_ if the warm sensation sliding down her cheek had anything to say.

"I was always monster Miyako, even when you met me at five years old." Faux Gaara's impassive voice droned, sliding his blunt nails harshly down through the rivulets of blood on her cheek to smear a trail down to her chest.

"Why else would I have been so easily swayed to be rid of you even when you claimed to love me?"

Miyako's chest rose and fell in tempo with the direction of her thoughts, panic setting in at "Gaara's" words.

'No, how could he have known so much about our relationship? Was he planning this from the very beginning? But why, and how?'

"I never needed you, even when it seemed you were the only one who could understand me. Perhaps when we were younger and all we had was each other, but then I realized that I needed only myself and gave into the impulses of my true nature."

Her heaving chest was suddenly ripped of the only thing that kept it from the stinging cold of the room, but her mind was busy trying to deny any accusations this false Gaara made.

'It's not real, Gaara's different now and he did need me to some extent, because I understood him. I can't listen to Obito, don't listen to Obito, it's a lie, _it's not real!_''

"I know what you're thinking about, you're thinking about how I wished you back to me; convincing yourself that I needed you. It's sad how you take a mere moment of weakness seriously, did you not think about the consequences of my actions?"

Her chest was grabbed with a bruising force as he asked the question, like he was hanging a threat over her head if she said the wrong answer.

"You came to me in my time of monstrosity in an attempt to better me and I didn't even recognize you, you were a hindrance to me; only causing me confusion and anger. I used you as an outlet for these mixed emotions; my greatest desire was to instill the fear you lacked when around me."

She was groped and yanked around as he made his point, making the chakra strings cut into her wrists and more blood gush onto the white sheets; causing him to smile wider if it was even possible.

The kunai that Obito had previously thrown was back in the faux Gaara's hands, the pointed tip making a small trail of blood from her neck down to her pants.

"When that didn't work, you had to die. And though I acted as though I mourned at your loss, I couldn't have been happier. You were finally eradicated from my life; your death erased all my confusion so that I could be a normal person; so that I could find my own path and gain the love and respect I deserved. I fared better without you and at the discovery of your continuing livelihood I will still fare better without you."

Her skirt was ripped off during this soliloquy and her shoes were thrown some other place, but her expression, because she was still not allowed, remained unphased though she screamed on the inside.

"Because all you do is bring pain Miyako, you couldn't love me the right way when we were six, you couldn't change me with the same love when we were thirteen, and you brought chaos to the ninja world with your life now. But if you desire so desperately to continue to love me, and require me the same love for you, I'll give you what I know of love; what you deserve."

Miyako didn't believe the smooth, cooing voice for a second and she fought against the dark voices in her head that attempted to convince her that this is how Gaara would treat her; that these words were what Gaara really felt.

The rustle of cloth had her breath quickening again, but she stubbornly looked to the side so she wouldn't have to see the act, or be fooled by it.

Her hips were gripped harshly between iron fingers as she scrambled desperately to the back of her mind to block out every sensation, every word and every feeling that might be evoked during the upcoming act.

Warm breath hit her ear as their pair of hips meshed together, setting her skin ablaze despite herself, and "Gaara" implored in a whisper: "look at me."

She had to, she had no choice. There eyes connected sea foam to purple when pain bloomed more intense than all the others, causing her eyes to screw shut from the force of it all.

Miyako bared it through the darkness of her eyelids and even when it was over, never once opening her eyes to face the reality of what had transpired, even "Gaara's" words were lost to her, had he said "clean this up"?

It was only when the door slammed shut to the bathroom that she allowed herself out of the construct of her dreams and back into what was the aches, pains and bruises of her truth.

It was only then that she bared all.

G/M

**Uhhh, please don't send me hate mail? **

**I hoped you sort of enjoyed that chapter…the next one won't be nearly as…angering. **

**Anyway on to good news, Alyce DreamEater and GMNASAI have submitted their ideas to me, TMC did to, but I'm not sure if she wants me to use that idea so…**

**Alyce wants me to do a side story where Gaara and Miyako's fate is twisted after he unknowingly wishes her from the lamp. You will all be very glad to know that he actually recognizes her, and then events play out from there. I think I'm going to title it: The Wishful Thinker: An Alternate Reality. If you think of a better title though, PM or review me peeps!**

**GMNASAI wants me to do a chapter/ side thingy where I explain Miyako's life before she became a genie. I haven't yet decided if I want that to be a side thing or if I'll just include it as some sort of filler later in TDM. **

**Anyways, all I have left to hear from are waterflygirl and Night Kaminari. So if you guys are out there and you still love me, review/ PM me! **

**That's all lovelies, see you next week, ideally anyway, **

**Stylish, Funny Acronym **


	3. Clash! Triple Uchiha Style

A/N: Heeeeey peoples! It's time for chapter three! In this chapter we will be observing the Uchihas and how Miyako reacts with all three of them. Hence why it is named Clash: Triple Uchiha Style. The title sounds so exciting, which is why I'm semi-excited I guess.

Anyway, reviewer love time!

RedX17: I'm not sure whether to take offense to that review or not. Although you said I'm a good writer, you also said you wanted to drop this story?! Why?! You'd better not! Anyway, Miyako is still sixteen. You will come to understand why later in the story.

Night Kaminari: Uh…I'm offended? Yeah, Miyako's pissed at me for the last chapter still too, I understand. And it says Naruto and Obito because Obito is her current master and Naruto…well you'll find that out later. But yes, it still is about Gaara, it just doesn't list it on my pairing thing, because they have that new four character thing, but it only lists the first two, Hinata and Gaara are also listed they just don't appear on the character line.

Alyce DreamEater: Oh you're making Miyako blush! I'm glad you're sanity is still intact even after that horrible display.

ILOVEANIME123: Erm, let's see how that first thing plays out shall we, and I don't plan on killing Miyako again…at least I don't think…that'll be like the "fourth" time that she seemingly died.

jus4theheckofit98: I would hope the chapter wasn't horrible…that wouldn't make my day at all…I hope this chapter is just as interesting for you.

GMNASAI: It's alright, the horribleness will come to an end soon, just be patient.

Quoted: Uh, I promise not to make you have nightmares anymore? Don't worry, after the climax there is always falling action which will be much calmer than the insanity that is going on right now. Trust me my friend, and I will make all of your dreams come true.

Disclaimer time, oh Miyako!

Miyako: I may hate you less than last week, but it still stands that you'll never own _Naruto_, I think you like violence even more than Kishimoto himself.

SFA: Thanks. Note the sarcasm.

Okay let's get on with it!

**Memories**

'Thoughts in the real world'

_Thoughts while under Sharingan _

'**Memory thoughts'**__

Clash: Triple Uchiha Style

Miyako couldn't look away; her eyes glued to the scene as if hypnotized by one of her own spells.

There stood the two Uchiha brothers, one bleeding to death and the other unable to move in his shock, despite this one smiled brightly in reminiscence as they poked the others forehead, fingers sliding a bloody trail until the figure fell with them.

Then the remaining Uchiha and Miyako shared the same look at the fall, mouths both open in shock as the other lied lifelessly on the ground.

And then, as if Sasuke had projected his voice in his inability to comprehend the situation, a shrill yell pierced the heavy atmosphere.

"ITACHI!" Miyako cried.

G/M

"**You're going to be bait." **

**Currently they were in a forest somewhere in Fire Country; Tobi was hopping around his sempai joyfully while the other attempted to contain his growing annoyance. Miyako on the other hand was replaying the words Obito had spoken to her moments before at camp with a growing sense of dread. **

**After extracting the host-less Sanbi, Tobi and Deidara were sent out, or more appropriately Obito ordered himself sent out, to track down Sasuke with Miyako seemingly just tagging along for the ride. That is, until Obito told her earlier this morning that she was going to be bait to lure the Uchiha out and that, if the circumstances got bad enough, she'd have to fight him. **

**While she theorized that she could take on the Uchiha, even though she completely despised her master, she was basing this information largely on prior experience. It was more than likely the boy had gotten much stronger, though she was reluctant to admit it, under the tutelage of Orochimaru. **

**In the end, though she disliked the youngest Uchiha, she was hesitant to fight him. But if Obito ordered her to do it, she had no choice. **

'**He must be planning a little Uchiha family reunion then, that is, if he can convince Sasuke not to attack Itachi on sight. Just what I wanted, the gathering of the last three members of a clan I despise in one place, yay.' **

**At first it seemed that they would go after Naruto, an idea that had her heart racing and her imagination running wild with the possibilities, but when Deidara had detected Sasuke with his camera instead of Naruto, he couldn't pass up an opportunity to slay the littlest Uchiha for killing Orochimaru before he could. When this was announced Miyako could literally feel her heart crawl back up from her stomach, and though "Tobi" didn't mind, Obito was pouting internally at the wasted effort, for he had assuredly thought up many ways for Miyako to send her precious people to the edge of death. **

"**Alright Miyako-chan~, it's time to commence operation Capture the Uchiha!" Tobi cheered as he and Deidara hopped on the clay birds that would fly them over Sasuke while she lured the boy into the perfect clearing Deidara had already scouted out. **

**She nodded once to show she understood and bounded away once the two were out of sight. **

**G/M**

**Sasuke was silently making his way through a forest on the edge of a small town in Fire Country; thinking over the recent events. **

'**With Orochimaru dead and my brother's death drawing ever closer I have to face the thoughts I've been meaning to displace.' **

**Sasuke realized that living in the now wasn't going to work well for him any longer, should he succeed in killing his brother there was always the question of, as tacky it sounds, what next? **

'**I suppose I have duties to my clansmen, that is, reviving the Uchiha clan. The only problem with that plan is the lack of willing females, although women have proven to be fickle, especially when it comes to good looks. I'm sure I can work something out.' **

**Sasuke would've pursued deeper thought into the topic, but with a stoic face all the while because no one needed to know his thoughts, but sudden sight before him caught him off guard. **

**Purple eyes were staring right at him through the foliage, familiar, glowing purple eyes that burned with mocking amusement at his shocked stare. **

"**Maki." He hissed, and despite what his brain was logically telling him about the situation, he had to pursue. **

**The eyes crinkled in amusement, the silhouetted shadow poised to spring as it let out a disembodied giggle.**

**He swiped her just as she jumped irritation and surprise radiating off the boy when the image seemed to flicker away. He landed silently on the grass below, intent on doing a mental check of his brain and find out just exactly ****why**** he was seeing hallucinations of Miyako Maki, but then the purple eyes were back, beckoning him, mocking him; driving him to chase. **

**This continued until he broke the tree line into a clearing where a dark figure's back was to him, looking out into the sky carelessly; as if his malignant aura didn't even faze them. **

**Sasuke's mind was clearing as he continued to stare into the back of the figure, he blamed those eyes, those damnable purple eyes, for driving him into this insanity, but now he was away and could focus on the real issue at hand. **

"**Well? Are you just going to stand there Uchiha?" A familiar drone mocked him, spinning his mind into overdrive once again. **

**Before he'd even had time to process his thoughts, his blade was shoved through her chest at a familiar, vicious angle and he watched with a sickening satisfaction as she slumped forward. **

**He panted despite himself, his mind catching up with his actions and realizing that they were foolish and hasty at best, after all Miyako Maki was supposed to be-**

**Something was approaching him, fast, he needed to move away. **

**As he went to pull out his sword he met resistance and as he looked up to assess the problem he found Miyako Maki's head turned 360 degrees around and grinning at him sadistically. **

**It was too late to move away, he'd have to think of something else to counter the attack and then maybe he could get some answers out of whoever set up this ambush or the crazed looking woman in front of him if she didn't die. **

**The flying missiles hit, creating what Deidara would argue was a breathtaking explosion but had Tobi crying out in alarm. **

"**Miyako-chan~! You blew her up Deidara-sempai!" Tobi cried dramatically. **

"**Baka, it's your fault, you should've warned Miyako ahead of time, un!" **

**The smoke finally cleared to reveal a just as unaffected Uchiha then before the explosion, having been protected by a large white snake. Similarly a still sadistically smiling Miyako was pinning both her and the Uchiha to the spot by keeping a tight grip on his sword still lodged through her chest. **

"**Phew!" Tobi blew out a breath at the sight of his servant and then let out a cheer. "Miyako-chan~!" **

**Deidara was not as happy with the results, grumbling something about how the boy was just like his brother. It wasn't as if he was unhappy about Miyako being alive, but she was such good bait that it was waste that she had to be stabbed for nothing. **

**Meanwhile Miyako dislodged herself from the sword at the call of her name and made toward the pair of criminals with a blank expression carefully etched into her face once again. **

**Sasuke watched with a bit of fascination as the girl casually walked away from him, but the loud cries of Tobi soon broke him of his reverie. **

"**That's the Akatsuki cloak isn't it?" He questioned, although Miyako would argue it sounded like a demand. **

"**Oh, you're Itachi's little brother, right?" Tobi baited, though no one else save for Miyako could tell. **

"**Where is he?" Sasuke demanded with a cool façade, but Miyako could tell by the inflection in his voice and the small sound of him tightening his grip on his sword that he had played right into Tobi's plan. **

**Neither Tobi nor Deidara deigned to answer him, Miyako would've but she was busy following one order at a time, which was walking back into the arms of her hated master, besides, she figured he wasn't really asking her anyway. **

**But apparently it was an open question, because she found herself back against his chest halfway to her destination and a blade pressed threateningly into her neck. **

"**I said where is he?" He accentuated his threat by pressing the sharp edge against her throat just a tiny bit. **

**Obito pretended to freak out while Deidara looked on impassively at the scene. **

**Miyako sighed internally as she steered her thoughts away from the depressing fact that her "teammates" didn't give two shits to instead wonder why Sasuke was using her as bait. **

'**He can't think that they'll fall for this, can he? If I managed to survive somehow being "stabbed" through the heart, than how can he think that the threat of decapitation will faze them? Unless…' **

**It was possible that Sasuke had figured out that Miyako had trapped him in a Genjutsu with those damn eyes of his and wanted to try his hand at killing her again, this time at the threat of it being real. **

"**Maki?" He prompted, but it's not like he'd get anything out of her even at the promise of decapitation. **

**Miyako was reminded of how impatient Uchiha's were when she was suddenly looking up at the sky instead of at Tobi and Deidara. **

'**Well what do you know?' She thought as her body, comically but morbidly headless, stumbled into her vision, 'he actually did it.' **

**Upon reattaching her head to her body Sasuke had "cut down" her master in an attempt to get to Deidara, perhaps because he thought Deidara would be the most cooperative? **

**She recommenced walking towards her master, looking totally unaffected at the fact that he was lying on the ground, in reality she probably would've been flipping shit, she did not want to be stuck with the Uchiha bastard longer than necessary and turning into wildfire while she waited for his reincarnation did not sound appealing. **

**Deidara yelled something to Tobi who sprung up and claimed Sasuke was too fast for them, which Miyako conceded with, he had gotten much faster since the last time she'd seen him. **

**She saw Sasuke shoot a curious look to her master and deduced that he was thoroughly confused about the situation, but Deidara is a spotlight whore and quickly garnered Sasuke's attention with his awesome art skills once again. **

**Deidara found his spiders pinned by Sasuke's lightning style, the little balls of clay were pierced with what looked like glowing needles that lie scattered all around Miyako and her master, Tobi was even forced to the ground by a few surrounding him, and begged Deidara not to set them off. **

'**He can form his lightning chakra into needles now, hm?' Miyako observed boredly as she stepped around the tiny discharged bombs. 'Deidara's not going to get very far in that case.' **

**Miyako would've preferred ****not**** to watch the battle, as she already knew its outcome, but Obito had ordered her to analyze Sasuke's skills and think up counter strategies and so she was forced to watch a match with a predetermined winner. **

**Deidara tried a few more C1 tricks, but Sasuke proved to be too slippery for him and so he was forced to step it up a notch with his C2 dragons. **

**If it wasn't already obvious, Miyako didn't want to be here, nor did she want to participate in a useless battle, but upon Tobi's encouraging and Obito's demanding and mischievous aura she was forced to help him bury landmines. **

**The result was astounding in Miyako's book. **

**Sasuke, an Uchiha and therefore, at least she was led to believe, an inherent prodigy, was forced to use his dead mentor's power to protect himself at the coordinated aerial and land assault. Deidara managed not only to pull this power out of him, but severely wound the boy in this form, disabling one of his wings and forcing him to sit in one spot.**

**One can only hope to win against an Uchiha for so long though. **

"**I see," Obito chuckled from the trees as Sasuke cut Deidara's dragon's wing to throw him off balance, Miyako was betting more specifically to give Deidara and eye for an eye, or in this case a wing for a wing. "Sasuke-kun truly does live up to the Uchiha name." **

"**You already knew that Deidara was going to lose to Sasuke, his nature is highly susceptible to Sasuke's, and that is without figuring in the skills he has now." Miyako stated matter-of-factly. **

"**Yes," Obito allowed, his hand coming to rest softly on her head as he continued to watch the scene before him. "But isn't it nice to sit and watch how much he's grown?" **

'**No.' **

"**Yes." Miyako answered obediently. **

**Obito played his part perfectly when it seemed Deidara died, yelling and sobbing about how cool Deidara was and how he was the best sempai ever, that is until Deidara rudely told him to shut up.**

**Sasuke was sitting a few meters away from them panting from overexertion of that curse mark, half observing the situation at hand and looking at the pair from the corner of his eye. **

"**Maki!" He yelled from his perch and she could sense the rolls of frustration even from her position. **

**Since she wasn't allowed to acknowledge him she settled for listening to whatever rant he was about to make. **

**This was a mistake considering she and Obito almost got skewered by his Chidori-sword had she not relocated them in time. Deidara thankfully was not one to be ignored and at the same moment Sasuke poised to strike again, a giant replica of him appeared to finish Sasuke off once and for all. **

"**Gwha!" Tobi cried. "It's C4 Kurara!" **

"**Tobi and Miyako, get away!" Deidara yelled above them, his eyes taking on a new determination as Sasuke looked up in awe and a bit of horror at the larger than life version of Deidara. **

**Miyako didn't need to be told twice as she hauled Tobi up by the waist and took off speedily in a direction that would hopefully take them away from the blast zone, Tobi all the while shouted about running and Kurara and death.**

**When they were far enough away Obito worked his way out of Miyako's hold to instead tow her by the arm faster in a direction a little off course. **

"**Where-?" She questioned, just because he wanted her to. **

"**I have some errands to run Miyako-chan~" He answered in his real voice, but at the promise of errands a chill of fear ran up her spine.**

"**Errands?" She tried to sound nonchalant, unafraid, but it must've shown in her voice because his aura suddenly mixed malice with glee as he turned to answer. **

"**Don't worry, you'll be staying in the cave." He cooed, grasping her chin in between harsh fingers. "After all, I wouldn't want you to see any of the awful things I'm going to have to do." He mocked followed by a laugh. **

"**What about Deidara?" She asked, purely because she was curious as to why Obito would leave his favorite victim behind. **

"**He'll be fine." The man promised darkly, but the assurance wasn't very assuring, which prompted her to show at least a little more concern. **

"**He won't stop until he's dead." She didn't need to clarify who he was for Obito to get it, especially not when his aura was conveying such unbridled glee. **

"**Exactly." **

**G/M**

"**Deidara is dead." **

**The remaining members of Akatsuki looked to the colorful image of Zetsu strangely, as if they couldn't quite believe their ears. **

"**Is that so?" Kisame chimed casually and grinned a shark grin. "And which one of the two killed him, Sasuke or the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki?" **

"**It was Sasuke." Zetsu's black half said, only to be interrupted by his white half, "but it seems that Deidara took Sasuke with him in his explosion." **

"**Ah, so he blew himself up. Well, Sasori always said he seemed like he'd die young anyways." **

**Itachi said nothing, he didn't even flinch when Pein jabbed that Deidara had done him a favor. **

"**However," Kisame pursed his lips suddenly, "I feel as though we're forgetting something."**

"**Tobi is dead too." Zetsu's white half informed almost too quickly. "He was within the blast range." **

"**Ah, disappointing, but you've got to give it to Deidara; it had to have been some jutsu for that chicken to be unable to escape." **

"**Oh, I just remembered something, if Tobi is dead than so is Miyako." Zetsu murmured.**

"**How unfortunate, I liked Tobi, especially when Miyako was with him." Kisame pouted childishly.**

"**It is of no matter, Tobi can be easily replaced, but Deidara was a valuable asset and will be sorely missed." **

**Kisame continued to pout but sighed in resignation with one last statement. "But Tobi was so lighthearted, like the comic relief to our moody organization, and Miyako was the innocent face that kept everyone from killing him." **

"**In any case, I am going; I shall mourn Deidara's death in silence." Then Pein's multi-colored image flickered away. **

"**I'm going to mourn Deidara's death too." White Zetsu claimed, although Black Zetsu shot back that he must've been really bored to do so and they flickered away as well. **

**Kisame sighed once again as he and Itachi sat alone in the hideout, but cracked one eye open to peer into the darkness beyond the Gedo statue. **

"**Oi, you can come out now Miyako, Pein is gone." **

**Itachi fixed his eyes on the dispassionate looking face of Miyako as she slowly walked into the light, but as usual she avoided the eyes of the Sharingan with a mixture of fear and hatred. **

"**Still not saying anything huh? Well, it doesn't pay for me to stick around and try to have a conversation with you two, so I'm going to take a nap." Kisame announced, jumping from his designated finger and landing lightly beside the still impassive woman with a large grin. **

"**Maybe you two can loosen each other up, who knows?" Throwing one last wave over his shoulder, Kisame to disappeared just like all the others. **

**Miyako vaguely panicked upon realizing that everyone else had left and she and Itachi were alone, not because Obito had suggested that she never be around Itachi alone and she feared that consequences of him finding out, but because he was an Uchiha and the majority of the time she was alone with an Uchiha bad things tended to happen to her. **

**She was logically going to about face and excuse herself politely from the room, well as polite as a selectively mute woman could be, when Itachi spoke to her for the first time…ever. **

"**You can speak." **

**A curious first topic to breech with her, and while she normally would've written off the statement and done as she'd planned to do anyway, this chance to discover some parts of the enigma that was Itachi was just too good to pass up. **

**A risen eyebrow was all he was awarded for his obvious statement and when he found that he wouldn't get any farther than that, he continued. **

"**Obito isn't here, so you can speak." **

**She knew what he was implying: Obito wasn't here and wouldn't find out so there was no need to pretend to be something she wasn't. Unfortunately for Itachi, Miyako didn't buy into the notion, Obito was scary good at knowing almost anything he wanted to know, his knowledge, though he was a good hundred years her junior, was astounding and the means he would go to find out what he needed; how he even went about collecting that knowledge…it was scary to even think about. **

**She knew all this; he knew all this, but it was strange how he managed to use those eyes to not only unintentionally, or intentionally she still couldn't tell, intimidate but pull truths from her. She theorized it was a Genjutsu, one even she couldn't detect. **

"**He'll find out somehow." She wanted reassurance; luckily Itachi had an answer for everything. **

"**Who is going to tell him?" He countered calmly as he landed gracefully in front of her, his red and black eyes still boring into her own. **

"**You have enough of a choice to keep it to yourself unless he outright asks you, and I will never have an opportunity." **

**Warning bells suddenly went off at this absentminded comment in Miyako's head, because it sounded like…**

'**No, he can't be…unless I get him to admit it.' Her face must've betrayed her musing thoughts or the Sharingan was more adept at reading blank faces than she first thought because Itachi was prompting her boredly when she met his eyes again. **

"**Ask." **

**Not a suggestion, not an inquiry a demand; a demand that pulled the answer from her lips. **

"**Why are you so sad?" **

**The room's natural quiet was overlaid with a sudden tense silence, but Miyako refused to fidget in the face of Itachi's impassiveness, hell her face was stuck like that anyway so she might as well use it to her full advantage. **

**All of the sudden, no literally all she did was blink ****once****, the world was turned red, black and white the telltale signs of…**

"**Tsukiyomi huh? And just what do you hope to accomplish by bringing me here?" Miyako droned, although her body was tensed in preparation of an attack. **

"**You are very adept at reading emotions Miyako." Itachi murmured behind her, and she spun around to find him sitting primly on a nearby bench, a faraway look on his face. **

**She approached the man cautiously, but made sure to stand at least 3 feet away from him as she surveyed the surroundings. **

**They appeared to be in a village at night, the moon was out though it was oddly colored due to the Sharingan's effect and houses rose to the sky all around them; all seemingly connected suggesting…**

"**A compound?" She mumbled aloud. **

"**The Uchiha compound a decade ago." Itachi informed. **

"**The night of the massacre." She finished as the first scream filled the night air. **

**Itachi looked fleetingly in the direction of the sound before settling his still red and black eyes on her. "I loved my family." He whispered, so low that Miyako almost lost at the sound of metal cutting flesh. **

"**Many would beg to differ." She countered, though surprisingly without malice even as the squelching sound of skin breaking and blood gushing met her ears. **

"**I loved Konoha more." He continued as if he hadn't heard her speak. **

**That suggested a lot to the genie, to put the safety of one's country over the safety of one's own family was a tiny clue into a reason why Itachi had committed what most would consider such an unthinkable act. **

"**But that didn't stop you from loving your family to the same degree did it?" She murmured, ignoring the image of a body falling near her feet. **

**Itachi didn't say anything, but Itachi didn't have to, she understood. **

"**This haunts you doesn't it? It fills you with grief to know that you had to choose between the love you had for your family and the love you had for your village." Miyako cast one look over the accumulating bodies of Uchiha around her feeling a twinge of grief for their empty faces. **

"**I wouldn't be surprised if you saw this every time you closed your eyes."**

**Itachi suddenly rose and walked past her, one look over his shoulder conveying that she should follow, so she did. **

**He led her down the street, past several bodies and finally to a scene she was sure Sasuke had nightmares about all the time. **

**The two brothers were squarely facing each other, Itachi looking much like the cold and mechanical killer he was trained to be and Sasuke looking like she would imagine a six year old boy would look at having lost his family. **

'**I don't have to imagine, I've seen it before.' She frowned at the sudden surge of thoughts about Gaara, but reestablished concentration on the scene at hand. **

"**I loved Sasuke, my dear foolish little brother, the most." Itachi narrated, watching blankly as his past self spoke the words that would drive Sasuke to become an avenger. **

"**That's why you left him alive, you could kill your aunts, your uncles, even your mother and your father, but you loved Sasuke too much to kill him." She turned from the scene to look at Itachi sternly. "You couldn't choose Konoha over Sasuke, in the end the love you had for your family won out over the love you have for Konoha." **

**Itachi continued watching, cringing lightly at the words "hate me little brother" but otherwise holding in all other emotions. **

"**That's not the only reason you kept Sasuke alive though, is it?" Miyako guessed, her theory swimming around in her head as she watched Sasuke faint. **

"**You're saying that Obito won't find out about this conversation from you because you're going to die soon, aren't you?" Even though she posed it as a question his silence was all the answer she needed. **

"**And Sasuke, Sasuke's going to be the one to do it, like you planned from the very start." **

**Neither Itachi nor Miyako looked at the other as they watched the last of the scene play out, Itachi leaving a mentally scarred Sasuke on the ground as he walked away though not without one tear to shed. **

"**You didn't bring me here to show me this." She stated matter-of-factly when it faded away, regarding Itachi again with a raised eyebrow. **

"**No. I didn't." He replied shortly. **

"**What is it that you want from me then?" Miyako prompted. **

"**You were right when you said that the love for my family is stronger than my love for Konoha, however…" He turned away from Miyako as if waiting for her to fill in the blanks. **

**When she could not figure out where he was going Itachi sighed heavily and turned back around again, a strange expression on his face, or maybe it was just that he had an expression at all that was strange, anger. **

"**I do not consider Obito my family." **

**It dawned on her then, "You're clearly against what Obito's planning…" Then she thought on the original plans Obito had had for Sasuke before Deidara had decided that the Uchiha needed to die. **

"**You think that he will use Sasuke." **

"**I know he will." **

"**What do you expect me to do about it?" **

**It was becoming increasingly obvious that Itachi wanted to use Miyako to somehow protect his brother from her master, but what Itachi clearly didn't understand was that there was nothing she could do. **

"**You will protect Sasuke from Obito-"**

"**Itachi, how much do you know about Obito and I's relationship?" **

**He paused; looking a fraction from annoyed at the interruption but took on another blank façade at the question. **

"**If you are insinuating that I am unaware that you serve under him-"He was interrupted yet again by Miyako, this time with a frustrated sigh. **

"**Then you should be aware-"She started though she couldn't understand how Itachi, the supposed prodigy, hadn't figured it out. **

"**As his genie." Itachi saw fit to interrupt her this time, finishing his sentence with a small smirk at her gaping face. **

"**That I cannot help you unless you possess the lamp." She finished after recovering from shock; an aggravated look directed at the smug man. **

"**There's no time." Itachi frowned quickly but his face was back to impassive before she'd even blinked. **

"**Then how-?" Miyako started to huff, but a hand stopped her mid-sentence. **

"**There are better ways." **

**Miyako doubted it, and if there were she certainly didn't know any, but Itachi looked confident and she learned that when most Uchiha's looked confident, they were right 99.99% of the time, the one percent being Sasuke when she'd battled him to get into Konoha International. **

**Before she could question what those better ways could ****possibly**** be, the world was tilting dangerously and she only realized that she was now prey to a Genjutsu right before the world went dark. **

**G/M**

When she opened her eyes everything was dark save for a small fire burning on a nearby wall, she valiantly wracked her brain to remember where she was at the moment, but the last thing she remembered before passing out was staring into Itachi's Sharingan eyes.

She rose unsteadily, grasping blindly around in the dark for a hold so she could hoist herself up and think. Her hand met something smooth across from her that bent curiously as she added her weight to it; she wondered idly what it could be while she finally righted herself; her eyes squinting closed at the migraine brought on by moving too quickly.

Behind the darkness of her eyelids she could feel the stare of another, a stare that was chilling, intimidating, a stare that sent fear lancing through her heart at the sheer familiarity of it.

She ripped her eyes open again, only to come in contact with twin pools of red and black, one of three tomoe and the other of a Shuriken that seemed to send a curious slicing pain through her heart.

"Maki."

G/M

**Sooo…no Gaara in that one, but there might be Gaara in the next one. Have no fear Gaara Miyako fans! **

**Still waiting to hear story ideas from Night Kaminari and waterflygirl if they have any. I also understand that you're all mentally scarred because of the last chapter and are hoping that this story doesn't turn all angsty and dark and whatnot. I can assure you that it won't, it's just that it will be kind of depressing-ish while Miyako is with the bad guys because, well, she's seeing the other side of the upcoming war and facing reality and we all need a little dose of reality sometimes, even fictional characters. **

**Don't worry there isn't any more mention of rape or abuse…okay there might be mention of light physical abuse, but nothing major like the craziness of chapter 2. K? **

**I think that's it. I'll see you later my pretties! **

**Stunning, Favorable Acronym. **


	4. Disbelief

A/N: Hi guys! It's time for chapter 4, pauses for applause, alright let's get started. In this chapter we will be having a long chat with the remaining two Uchiha, specifically Miyako and Sasuke as he tries to figure out why Miyako is alive, hence why this chapter is called Disbelief.

K Reviewer love time!

Flatwaffles29: I missed you. :). Please don't hurt me. I promise that the next chapter will have Gaara in at, maybe not Gaara Miyako interactions, but they'll be in the same room as one another.

RedX17: I don't think you mean those things at all. You love this story don't you? And technically I only gave her like four different names, and it really wasn't even four because you barely knew Miyako Kurosawa before she turned into Miyako Maki and she and Raccoon were what the story were largely about, so I don't count Ai or little Miyako. So I really only changed her identity twice. And I object to the killing her off thing too, I only technically killed her once, she faked it all the other times. But none of this convinces you does it? Yeah, I'm a complicated writer…

ShinoCoolGaaraAwesome: You should definitely be reading this sequel my friend. I also think your name is the embodiment of truth.

TMC-Yuki: WTH O.O. You find Miyako getting raped boring?! Thank you for admitting chapter 3 was good, but OMG…I'm speechless. I do agree though, Miyako's adventure with Itachi was intense, hell writing Itachi is intense for me because I feel like I did him wrong in some way…Ah well, such is life.

Alyce DreamEater: When doesn't Itachi have a plan, am I right? :D

Quoted: You're welcome twice; as for your last question, all will be revealed shortly my child.

Guest one: Thank you for your reaction, it brightens my day. :D

Alright on with the story, Miyako?

Miyako: There's a difference between me and SFA. At one point I had Gaara and therefore had everything, SFA on the other hand has never owned _Naruto_, she as a result has never lost _Naruto _and she will probably never ever own _Naruto_ in the future.

Thanks Miyako, not. Anyways…

Disbelief

Oh joy its Sasuke, because who else calls Miyako by her, obsolete, last name anymore?

She didn't greet him, solely because she didn't want to, and pointedly acted as if she was suddenly deaf. Seeing Sasuke just suddenly caused a flaring…displeasing feeling inside her, stronger than the normal Uchiha hatred and even stronger than the hatred she already harbored against him for betraying her former friends, willingly.

This sudden malice for him was puzzling, she shouldn't have had a reason for such emotion; she hadn't seen Sasuke since he killed Deidara and he'd done nothing personal to her at that time, after all she'd barely known Deidara so she couldn't exactly mourn his death properly. Plus, Sasuke was semi-defending himself so it was excusable to "kill" Deidara, really it was more of a suicide with an intent of homicide, in order to protect his own life.

There was clearly something else that she was missing…

"Ah, you're awake."

Obito's chilling real voice drew her forcefully from her thoughts and she whipped her head to face him expectantly.

He sat down close to her, a canteen in his hand to offer to Sasuke she supposed because she doubted it was for her.

"How do you feel?" Again, not a question directed at her.

"Who are you?" Sasuke, because he's an obstinate twerp, demanded instead.

"Who I am really shouldn't concern you right now, Sasuke-kun, here." He offered the boy a drink, because he was planning to use the boy in an elaborate scheme and needed to gain his trust, Miyako reasoned, now why he couldn't offer her a drink to get on her good side as well, she had no idea…sarcasm.

"How do you know my name?"

"I treated your wounds, but you shouldn't be forcing yourself up so soon." Obito, Tobi, Madara…whoever the hell he's pretending to be now said.

"Sasuke is an impatient one, Madara…" Miyako warned from her place in the shadows.

"I see you're alive Maki, and you've apparently switched sides, how can that be? I was at your funeral; I saw them lower you into the ground!"

Sasuke, it seemed to Miyako, was more worked up about her identity and existence than his last living relative, of course he didn't know that yet…

"Now, now Sasuke, we are not your enemies, we may have started that way, but rest assured that Deidara's death is of no concern to me."

Sasuke narrowed his eyes in suspicion, a good sign if there was any in this hopeless situation for Miyako, hopefully he was discerning just how crazy Obito was due to the blatant disregard for his partner's life.

"I actually brought you here to tell you something."

Sasuke didn't seem at all interested, in fact he was carefully analyzing the man in front of him and measuring his every word, a calming thought to Miyako, but she knew that it wouldn't stay that way, not for long.

"Not interested? Perhaps if I word it in a different way, how's this, I brought you here to tell you something about Itachi Uchiha."

Miyako thought, vainly, that Sasuke would remain disinterested, after all Sasuke had just made a point to kill his brother, so why should he bother to feel some sort interest for someone he _claimed_ to so venomously hate?

That was not how Uchiha's effed up relationships worked.

Sasuke perked up in what he thought was a subtle manner, but what Miyako could discern was an emotion akin to a child in a candy store.

If a "child" meant a mentally unstable young man and "candy store" meant half-truths that would drive him right into the arms of her oppressor and into chains similar to her own.

"That's right, you thought you knew your brother, but Itachi kept many things from you."

Miyako, though she knew nothing of Itachi's past, felt some niggling feeling that Obito was about to leave out some particular key facts and twist some important events to fit his purposes. She didn't know why she felt this way, she didn't even know why she wanted to defend the Uchiha, but some part of her, some really quiet part, protested to the upcoming conversation.

"I suppose introductions are in order. You see, I am also a survivor of the Uchiha clan…" Obito began to remove his mask, something Miyako was anticipating even less than this upcoming conversation and she felt warring instincts of dread and personal feelings of anticipatory glee as he revealed the Sharingan eye.

Sasuke was surprised, duh, but the next moments would be more surprising, to everyone.

Miyako blinked, literally all she'd done was _blink_ dammit, and suddenly her master was being engulfed in black flames.

She sat there dumbly for a moment, staring in awe between the pained cries of her master and the Sharingan wielding Sasuke, wait, what the hell, was his eye _bleeding?_

Another cry caused her to snap of her reverie and curse, lunging from her faithful post in the dark to frantically help her master quell the flames.

When they had been calmed, much to her inner dismay, they heard Sasuke's voice ring out in confusion: "what was that?"

The reminder that Sasuke had managed to do this…to her _master_, kicked in the murderous instinct within her and had her lunging out of the darkness before her better judgment could argue that she wasn't _nearly_ pissed enough to want to kill Sasuke. In fact, all she wanted to do was kiss the ground at his face for causing her master a fraction of the pain he'd shown her in the past few months.

Thankfully, again for everyone, she paused mid-attack, whether at the sound of Obito's voice commanding her to do so or the odd sensation constricting in her chest that prevented her from even laying a finger on the youngest Uchiha she didn't know.

"That was Itachi's Amaterasu implanted in you to kill me. Tch, even after he's dead he still manages to surprise me."

'There's a reason Itachi probably implanted Amaterasu in Sasuke you evil asshole and if Sasuke has any brains he should know not to trust you. Alas the littlest Uchiha is a moron.' Miyako cut sardonically in her head as she settled herself in for a long conversation next to a wooden barrel out in the open.

Sasuke eyed her distrustfully, but she paid no mind to him, this seemed like the only time she'd have a chance to be lost in her thoughts without Obito reaming her, so she took it without complaint.

Her thoughts, when she was allowed to think them, were a strange mixture. As always, her mind was obsessed with Gaara, worrying about him, daydreaming about what he was doing, fantasizing about being with him in ways that were steadily pointing to increasingly inappropriate dreams.

Unfortunately it wasn't just Gaara and naughty thoughts, which she was all for had they been her only thoughts. No, she had to share her beautiful thoughts of Gaara with confusing and infuriating thoughts of the last surviving Uchihas, plus some interweaving thoughts of the recently deceased one.

It was no secret that she hated Obito, so those thoughts were minimal at best now, just a constant buzz of anger in the back of her head even, plans to loophole her way out of his grasps however were just one of the starring roles in her mind. Those thoughts she didn't mind much, especially if she could refine her plan today while Obito was being a complete asshole and wooing Sasuke to the dark side.

It was the thoughts of the recently dead Uchiha and his little brother that were freaking her out.

She hadn't given much thought to Itachi before, besides the fact that he scared the ever-living shit out of her, and she'd hardly given thought to Sasuke since they'd failed to retrieve him three years ago, but now it seemed that they were hogging the spotlight from her beautiful Gaara.

Miyako hated Uchihas, as she'd been bred to before she was even a genie, so the first time she'd laid eyes on Sasuke after having pleasantly avoided all contact with an Uchiha for at least a hundred years, she'd instantly hated him and Itachi was the same principle. It was an inherent reaction just as well as the fear she held for Uchihas, she couldn't just bring herself to feel any other feelings besides the negative. So why, pray tell, was she suddenly faced with less than fearful and murderous thoughts about the Uchiha brothers?

To be more specific, she felt almost…sorry for them.

She briefly remembered feeling like this for Sasuke when she realized that he was an ice-prick because of his family's death, but the feeling hadn't lingered, for various reasons, one of the more vindictive voices in her head stating that the Uchiha clan's death was karma's way of repaying Miyako for the Uchiha's sticking her in this shitty situation.

Now, all of the sudden, her hatred for Sasuke had diminished rapidly, her fear of Itachi almost seemed silly in her mind and there was a part of her that longed to…_help_ _Sasuke_?

She couldn't figure out where all of these strange emotions were coming from, she could've sworn just yesterday that she'd hated both Sasuke and Itachi with a burning passion, but now today she probably couldn't bear to say she _loathed_ them without wincing at the lie.

What the hell had changed?

"I want to know what Maki has to do with this." Sasuke demanded suddenly, his eyes trained on her with a feral grace unmatched in any other clan.

Obito looked at her expectantly and though she longed to let the truth fall from her lips, his look clearly said that Sasuke need not know her true origins unless his genius brain deduced it first.

"That is none of your concern." 'I serve under this evil megalomaniac, duh.'

"Why did you fake your own death?"

"Figure it out on your own." 'I liked the Leaf Village and its ninja too much so I betrayed everyone I cared about and therefore had to escape death by faking my own.'

"Was it to come here, is this where you've been the last three years?"

"Give it a rest, Sasuke." 'No, more like three months, but it seems like I've been living under this torture for three years.'

"Why… how is it that you're immune to physical attacks-?"

"That's enough, Sasuke." Madara-wannabe said sternly, with what Miyako could guess was a one-eyed glare from his murderous aura.

"Now, I will leave you here to rest, your friends should be arriving soon enough, and then I have a task for you to complete."

Sasuke wasn't, thankfully, coherent enough to argue with this suggestion as he lied back in his makeshift bed to digest the recent events.

"Miyako, stay here and watch him, and do not speak a word unless Sasuke requires something of you."

That she could do, she wasn't planning on speaking to Sasuke anyhow, but her thoughts quickly did a 180 as Obito's chakra faded.

"He's gone, so answer my questions Maki."

She really didn't want to, not after he'd taken that tone with her, but her mind quickly deduced that anyone _against_ Obito was an ally to her.

And she wouldn't be penalized, after all Sasuke _required_ the information needed.

"And what would those be again?"

Sasuke sat up and poignantly pinned her with his black gaze that she had to forcefully command herself not to flinch against.

"Let's start with how you survived getting a sword shoved through your heart, twice."

She picked her words carefully, something that did not go unnoticed by Sasuke, but he didn't need to know the entire truth, he hadn't gained the right.

"Let's just say that I'm not so easy to kill."

"Was it a Genjutsu?"

"No." That was all she would say on the matter, something that Sasuke, though he was a heartless bastard, could easily read in her face.

"Fine, but what was the point of faking your own death?"

"If you hadn't noticed Uchiha, I betrayed both the Leaf _and_ the Sand that day, there was no way either of you were going to let me live, so I took my fate into my own hands." She grunted despite herself but made sure her face stayed wholly impassive.

"They certainly treated you as if you should be buried like a hero."

Miyako didn't have an answer to that, because she honestly didn't know what was going through any of the Leaf ninja's heads at that time.

"I'm sure they wouldn't feel the same if they'd known that you lied to them, that you were here the whole entire time."

"That's not a question."

"Were you then?"

"No, it's only been a few months."

"What were you doing for years before this then?"

She wondered vaguely why the hell Sasuke was so freakin curious, and while she could sit here and give him a whole history of the things she'd been doing up to this point, and gladly would've if it would've taken some weight off her chest, Sasuke's mind was on one track, the Itachi track, and she highly doubted that he wanted to hear of her struggles with Gaara.

"Why don't you ask me what you really want to know instead of beating around the bush?"

Sasuke 'hn-ed' and combed a hand through his duck-butt hair that irritated Miyako to no end before replying: "Did you know all those things about Itachi?"

"Not before now, no. I didn't care to know them either." Miyako deadpanned, though a small twinge in her heart protested to the mistreatment of the older sibling's memory.

"But unless Madara kept you from Itachi, you had to have met him at one point?"

"I did meet Itachi, briefly, but it's not as if we had any meaningful conversations or anything."

Miyako wrinkled her nose at the protesting twinges still taking place near her heart as Sasuke sighed in frustration and she wondered angrily again why she was feeling…she supposed it was guilt, for the deceased Uchiha and his brother.

"Why does Itachi want Madara dead?"

'Because he's an evil bastard' would've been a great, as well as truthful, answer to that question, but instead she had to say.

"Madara defies all laws of nature, and I suppose that Itachi can tell that his appearance unbalances the Shinobi world."

Well at least her lie sounded well-educated.

"Are you indebted to him or something, is that why you're here?"

Miyako tsked while internally cursing the fact that she was becoming more like an Uchiha everyday.

"Something like that."

Sasuke tsked back, apparently dissatisfied with this answer but not willing to do much about it.

"Are you going to help him bring down Konoha?" Sasuke finally asked after a long period of silence, his tone sounding disinterested while lying back on his cot, but his posture conveying that he was actually quite curious to know.

"I don't know." She replied noncommittally, which really meant 'No, but so far I don't have a choice.'

If Sasuke was confused by this answer he didn't voice it, as he stared at the cave ceiling.

"I am."

Then he turned his back on her to dwell in his own thoughts, or perhaps dreams, leaving Miyako to finally have some time to plan her own.

'Oh Sasuke, that's what you think now.'

G/M

"Is it alright to encourage others here?"

They were back in the darkness of the room Obito had trapped Sasuke in and the man was currently easing out his excitement by stroking her hair in a disjointed rhythm.

"They will be useful to me, if only for a little while."

They sat in silence a while longer, but Obito apparently wanted to talk and she had no choice but to oblige.

"How did you errands go?"

She knew right then that it was the wrong question to ask when she felt the maliciously gleeful aura seep it's cold fingers into her skin even through the darkness.

"I ran into your friends."

She schooled her body to not stiffen and played her voice out to sound bored, "friends?" As if she didn't have any of those.

"Yes, Naruto-kun and Kakashi." He sounded amused, he probably didn't believe her act for one second, because he wasn't a total moron, and the mentioning of two of her most important three people signaled he knew this fact good and damn well.

She somehow didn't believe that it was _just_ Naruto and Kakashi, at the very least Sakura would've probably been there too no matter what they were doing and as she thought harder about it she deduced that they were probably running after the heartless bastard sleeping a few feet from them.

"And?" Though he knew she was bluffing she still continued to sound disinterested for her own good.

"I enjoyed playing with them, I had no idea either were so skilled, but it was my own fault, I should've asked for pointers from you before I left." He chuckled darkly into the curve of her neck as he held her borderline painfully by the hair.

Miyako shuddered despite herself in nervous relief, Obito obviously hadn't _killed_ them but that didn't mean he _wouldn't_ when the opportunity arose.

"But what I will enjoy even more," he whispered dangerously against her skin as she stared unseeingly in growing terror ahead of her, "is watching _you_ deal with them. I want to savor their faces as I order you, their most precious Miyako, to turn against the very people she _died_ protecting. And I simply can't wait to gauge their reactions, Miyako-chan when I wish for the deaths of every single person you've ever cared about, especially Sabaku No Gaara."

Miyako hadn't realized that she was hyperventilating through his whole speech until he harshly whipped her harshly by the hair around to face him and she found reflected in the swirling Sharingan eye her own fearful reflection.

"I see you still have not eradicated that friendship from your mind, Miyako-chan~. Pity. But no matter, the upcoming events will soon break you of every feeling."

Then he left her lying sideways on the cold cave floor in complete darkness with his childish voice still ringing the threat in her ears.

Complete silence broken by only the harsh pants of her panic was the only thing happening outside of her, but on the inside she wailed and cowered as the darkness allowed the images Obito's voice promised to take shape and fester in self-made wounds.

G/M

Gaara had taken to sleeping the months that followed the extraction of his tailed beast. The first month had been the hardest, simply because he couldn't comprehend the fact that he _could_ sleep. The first few nights had been the hardest, Temari and Kankuro had literally tried everything they could think of to put him to sleep, but the insomnia had proven too strong at first, and when his restless eyes _had_ finally managed to fall, a dream, or what Raccoon…_Miyako_ had later told him was a nightmare, would wrench him right out of it.

It wasn't until Racc-Miyako had recovered enough to take the night shift again that Gaara had finally found the sedative that allowed him to sleep peacefully.

'Miyako, the whole entire time…not Raccoon…'

Speaking of the woman, she had recently been starring in all of his dreams…as well as his nightmares.

Even now, as his eyes finally managed to drift close after hours of restlessness without his personal sedative, she was overtaking his mind.

And it looked like today was going to be a nightmare.

G/M

_Gaara darted his eyes about the room, making sure to cover every dark corner and every lighted crevice as well as glare occasionally at the muffled giggles by his side. _

"_No one is here Kazekage-sama; you're safe from any humiliation." The same voice that belonged to the bell like giggles assured beside him. _

_Gaara grumbled but moved from the darkness of the doorway to the large bed in the center of the room, tugging the owner of the bell voice with him. _

_Now that they were under the moon's glow Gaara could glare at the now silent ANBU properly as she radiated lingering traces of mocking in her posture. _

"_Now, now, aren't you in the least bit tired?" She murmured, relaxing her darkly clad body in assurance and radiating a calming presence in teasing's wake. _

_Gaara grunted noncommittally, still miffed that they had this exchange every time he required her to sleep…which was every day, but he could not deny the fact that his whole body was screaming to relax and fall into exhaustion's sweet oblivion. _

"_Exactly." Then glove-clad hands slowly began to disrobe him. _

_His heartbeat stuttered for a moment, making his eyebrows crease slightly at the words that wouldn't leave from his head. _

_When he had first told his brother about his new sleeping rituals, Kankuro had given him an odd look and asked if Raccoon had really been okay with the implications of undressing her Kazekage every night. _

_At first he didn't understand, the practice was calming to him, he explained this much to Kankuro, but then Kankuro had explained to him that Raccoon being made to undress him every night could be taken as…sexual. _

_That led to a long awkward conversation Gaara never wanted to repeat. _

_The gist of the message was still implanted in him though, and he had made to rectify the situation immediately, however upon explaining this to Raccoon and offering his sincerest apologies, she had only replied that the practice was sexual if Gaara felt that it was. _

_At first he had not, he even hastened to tell her that he gained nothing out of the encounter when she promised that she would refrain, but that was before, before…confusing things had started to happen a few days ago. _

_He still had not discussed it with Kankuro, in fact he did not wish to, but he knew that if he wanted to understand what was going on with his body all of the sudden he would have to squish down some pride. _

"_What's wrong?" _

_He looked down to find his clothes, save for his pants and underwear, all draped across her shoulder, she having already hung up his robes and hat. _

_He was that out of it. _

"_Nothing." He replied shortly, but his thoughts trailed off. _

_Raccoon draped his shirt across his desk chair as he settled into the middle of the bed before settling her weight on the right side of the bed. _

"_You're thinking too hard." She chastised lightly as she leaned against the headboard and carded her fingers through his hair. _

_He sighed out, relinquishing the confusing and scrambled thoughts of his mind to sink into the sheets. _

"_That's it." _

_His eyelids grew heavier with each stroke and just as he felt himself falling blissfully into sleep's embrace, the smiling face of Miyako, strangely in Raccoon's ANBU garb, appeared in the slits his eyes had become. _

_They snapped open in comprehension, fighting the lulling feeling that those hypnotic purple eyes placed over him so that he could question her. _

"_Miyako…why?" He husked, as if he had already been asleep and the image in front of him was just that, an image. _

_The fingers stopped along with the struggle to fight against sleep as Gaara came into lucidity. _

"_No…" She murmured, suddenly giving a violent cough that had her bent over double. _

"_Miyako…" Gaara sat up and reached for her, the rage he felt at being lied to quelled momentarily in concern as she lurched from the bed to hack cough violently in a dark corner. _

"_You're not supposed to be awake…"She rasped, several short coughs punctuating her statement. _

_Gaara was out the bed in a second, carefully stepping over to the corner to aid her. _

"_Miyako…"_

"_You weren't supposed to see me." She gasped between coughs. _

"_Miyako we've got to get you to a hospital-"Gaara demanded softly as he approached her._

"_No!" She cried, crawling away from him. "I lied to them, I lied to you just let me die this way!" _

"_I won't." Gaara hissed in frustration, grasping her upper arm quickly when she tried to escape and bundling her in his arms. _

"_No, no! Don't you understand what you've done?!" She yelled into his chest. _

"_Just tell me what's wrong, how do we fix this?" Gaara demanded, pushing her slightly away from him so that he could look at her face. _

_What he saw made him drop her in shock, she was bleeding…everywhere. _

_She crumpled to the floor, gasping things about how Gaara couldn't fix anything, how he shouldn't have seen her, how he should have been asleep, her speech coming faster and faster until it just became an unintelligible mess to his ears. _

"_Miyako, Miyako-"Gaara had collected the bloody, dying girl in his arms again, ignoring the fact that she was staining everything with her life substance. "Tell me how to fix this, just tell me-"_

"_You can't fix this," she groaned, "just leave me to die here. There's nothing you can do because you're killing me Gaara." _

_Was it possible for your heart to stop beating but still be breathing at the same time? _

"_What?" _

"_You're killing me, you saw me and you're killing me-"_

"_Miyako-"_

"_You're killing me Gaara!" She shouted in his face just before she let out a large wet sounding cough that forced her eyes shut and the blood to poor faster from her various wounds. _

_Then she stilled completely, breath coming out in one last shudder before she slumped over. _

"_Miyako?" He shook her. "No, no, Miyako say something." _

_He felt himself panicking; he hadn't panicked over another's death since Yashamaru and he could slowly feel himself falling into that familiar hyperventilating feeling he'd tried his hardest to forget. _

"_Miyako!" _

G/M

"Gaara!"

The redhead shot from his bed breathing harshly, his sheets in between an iron grip and his eyes as wide as saucers.

"Shh, shh, it was just a dream, Gaara." A female voice soothed near his ears.

He whipped his head to the source, his heart hurting with hope that it would be Miyako; that his reality and well as his dreams would just be figments of his imagination, but he found _Temari_ cradling his head to her chest in the next second and he found _Temari _stroking her fingers through his hair immediately after.

Temari, not Raccoon, not Miyako…

But he would take it, because he needed it, he needed the comfort; he needed to know that someone was still there for him when Miyako couldn't be.

"No, it was a nightmare…"

'_You're killing me Gaara!'_ was the thought playing like a broken record in the back of his head as he drifted restlessly back to sleep in the arms of the wrong person.

G/M

…**I hope that doesn't give you guys nightmares…**

**That's the end of that chapter, after like almost two weeks of waiting…**

**Night Kaminari has submitted to me here idea, I have dubbed it "What would happen if Miyako met Minato :D" **

**Now all it need is waterflygirl, if any of you guys see her, tell her to get on with it already, lol. **

**That's it I think, toodles loves! **

**Socially, Funky, Acronym. **


	5. Eve of the Darkest Hour

A/N: Yaaaaay, it's time for chapter 5! This is my favorite chapter because Gaara and Miyako are back inside the same room. Speaking of summaries, this chapter is going to be about the Five Kage Summit. Enough said.

Reviewer Love

Flatwaffles29: Yeah, poor everybody, but I'm glad their misfortune satisfies you. That's what I'm all about, the satisfaction. And about that update request…

RedX17: Cause I'm awesome. Duh. Lol, jk. You're the awesome one for continuing to read even though it gets confusing sometimes, there will be simpler times coming to you soon my friend.

Alyce DreamEater: Soon Alyce, be patient and please don't have an anxiety attack, I don't want to be responsible for your possible death. =D

Quoted: Oh good, now I can sleep at night.

arabella15: Your zebra is awesome, I wish those types of zebras were real :D. I'm glad you agree with the majority of readers and wish that Tobi would die in a hole, a dark one, with no one to agree that he is a good boy.

Guest1: Don't worry Guest person, Tobi won't make this story drag on too much longer, but thank you

Guest2: Yeah, everyone feels that way, don't worry Tobi will get his just desserts.

LateNightSleeper: Good question and you shall soon see! Patience my lovelies.

Michiko123: Only the greatest Oc character besides Miyako that the world has ever seen. Lol jk, he should come in at chapter three of TWT as the ANBU black ops that escorts her to Sarutobi's office.

Amello O: Haha, I can't either. Oops, I'm already supposed to know that…

Guest3: Like Miyako your wish is my command sir/ madam.

On with the story, hit it Miyako

Miyako: Yeah, so here's the thing, SFA is a great person and all, but there's no way she could ever own _Naruto_. That's just crazy talk, am I right?

No comment. Anyways…

Eve of the Darkest Hour

"Do you even care?"

A dark head turned to regard the flat drone of the voice with blatant disregard in their dark eyes, as if to say they didn't want to be bothered with dealing with Miyako, but found it entertaining, so they put up with her.

Those eyes drove her up the wall, that face drove her up the wall, every hint of darkness that just clung to the littlest Uchiha _drove her up the wall_, and if she wasn't under strict orders not to lay a finger on the stupid brat she'd be strangling him. Plus there was still that inner twinge that liked to tweak itself every time even a thought of hurting the boy came up, much to her annoyance.

"You don't." Her face was impassive but her eyes said differently 'this is not who Itachi would've wanted you to be, this is not the kind of ninja that Kakashi bred you into and you don't even resemble the rival and friend of Naruto.'

Sasuke turned away, because in the last month that they'd been forced together he'd learned to read her eyes because they hid nothing, not from him anyway.

"I don't need lectures from a dead girl."

"At least I cared about the wellbeing of my comrades before I "died", and I wasn't given the same opportunity of education as you were."

"They'll be fine." He defended weakly.

"Because you Uchiha's know everything, right?" Miyako snorted.

"Shut up!" Sasuke said icily, "Or would you like me to tell Madara about our little chats?"

Miyako zipped her mouth shut, but that didn't stop her from shooting the nastiest glare she could muster at the Uchiha.

G/M

It had happened only a few days ago, the Five Kage Summit, where Miyako's world had been thrown momentarily into heaven before plunging back into hell again, only deeper this time.

The day started off with discussion.

"Sasuke you and your comrades will be the distraction that gets us inside the Summit."

Sasuke for his part did not looked pleased at playing the bait and Miyako was, for once, praying that Sasuke would finally show his haughtiness against Obito and refuse. Obito, alas, was predicting this sour outcome, for he said in the same breath:

"I hear Danzo will be there as he has apparently been chosen as a candidate for the Sixth Hokage."

Miyako stopped herself just short of grinding her teeth in frustration.

At first she had not understood why Danzo was so hated by Sasuke, but when it was explained to her that he had a hand in encouraging Itachi to kill the clan, _she_ had started to hate him, and that was hard to believe considering that she could hardly fathom hating someone other than Obito with such intensity.

So it was no surprise that Sasuke was all for it in the next second, honestly, he was so easily swayed.

"You will be my little spy Miyako-chan," Obito chirped in his Tobi voice right before it morphed back into a deadly hiss, "but you are not to say anything the entire time we are there, understand? There will be no form of communication unless I allow it, but just in case you'd like to find a loophole in my orders-" Miyako flinched internally in panic, 'well he clearly knows something is amiss' "you will be wearing a mask and you are not permitted to take it off until we arrive back here, do you understand?"

"Hai." She droned and his aura morphed back into a cheerful disposition. "I know you are disappointed at missing an early opportunity to destroy everything preventing you from bending to only my whim, but it's too soon my dear. Patience, you will soon have your perfect moment and then your world will revolve around me and only me."

Miyako was too busy hyperventilating to even dignify his statement with a response, and the man moved on as if he hadn't just said something overly possessive and earth-shattering.

"Zetsu you will make sure to keep an eye on things, yes?"

The man must've nodded in confirmation because in the next second Obito had latched her arm in a steel grip and pulled her towards the entrance of the hideout, all the while thrusting a porcelain mask over her face and draping a cape over her body.

G/M

Now Miyako thought…keyword _thought,_ that she would be staying close to Obito for this little nightmarish adventure. She wasn't positive that she would enjoy this option more than what she'd been given, but she wasn't necessarily allowed to question Obito's orders. Sasuke however, was another story.

"I don't need Miyako to play guard for me, she's your servant; _you _watch her." Sasuke grumbled, his glare intensified by the wind whipping snow into his eyes.

Miyako wasn't paying attention to the subsequent conversation; after all there were too many other things to worry about, like being in the same room as Gaara again after months of separation. Granted it wasn't quite the reunion she was hoping for considering she would be dressed in a mask and cape and there would be no way for Gaara to tell that she was Miyako, but she could imagine what would happen if he could.

The worst case scenario happened in one step, instant and possibly gratifying death via sand coffin, if that even worked that is, but the best…

First she would grovel, because he deserved a hundred apologies for what she'd done, amidst that groveling she would probably have to shed some light on some things she'd purposely kept from him. If he didn't kill her then, perhaps it would be a gateway for other things, like forgiveness and maybe friendship like they used to have. Yes, friendship was the likely choice, the safe choice, much safer than confessions of feelings, specifically love. That could go badly; rejection wasn't something she could handle after everything that had happened.

For a moment she could pretend that he felt the same; let her imaginations wander to a flushed Gaara reciprocating her feelings, shyly holding her hand, finally working up the nerve to kiss her, to kissing her whenever he wanted; wherever he wanted on whatever level surface they could find nearby.

"Miyako!"

Whoops. Not the brightest thoughts to be thinking around her possessive master and if he found out he'd have her hide before she even saw Gaara, better tune in now.

"Hai?"

"Cease your unnecessary thoughts about the dead and accompany Sasuke to the Kage Summit."

"Where will you be going Tobi-sama?" Miyako droned as said man slowly started to make his way away from the group.

"I have…errands to run."

"I understand." Miyako made sure to screen any emotion she felt at the word "errands" because that typically meant "torturing your friends" and since Obito was already peeved about her Gaara thoughts, she figured she'd better keep her friend thoughts to herself.

"Good." And then he was off, she felt an instinctual twinge in her gut that was screaming at her to go with him and make sure he was safe, but her personal feelings on the matter outweighed her genie sense. So she turned to a scoffing Sasuke and motioned for the rest to follow her lead.

G/M

"Zetsu?"

Said plant man paused in his thoughts to turn to the five pairs of young eyes looking at him expectantly.

"We need to be careful." Was all he said, but Miyako wasn't stupid. Zetsu wasn't necessary to Sasuke and the others: they could clearly infiltrate the building without him, so the only explanation was that Obito was planning something, now what that was was a mystery to her, but she highly doubted it involved somehow jeopardizing his use for Sasuke or somehow putting her on the spot.

At least she hoped it didn't.

She wondered why Sasuke had to attack Danzo at the Kage Summit anyway, they were faced with the challenge of avoiding detection of at least eighteen powerful people, something Miyako was wary even she could pull off, and should they attack they had to _defend_ against eighteen powerful people. Miyako may be powerful, but she doubted she was _that_ powerful and that wasn't even taking into account Gaara being in the mix.

All in all she just couldn't see this plan going very well even without the suspicious air of whatever Zetsu was planning to do.

G/M

It was especially boring waiting around with the others just to slink a few more inches around the samurai, but Miyako would've taken that any day over what Zetsu was telling her.

First off, he'd just grabbed her mid-jump from the ceiling to an obscure pillar, no warning or anything, and fazed her through the wall. She'd had enough composure not to scream bloody murder at the unexpected grab, but she'd come pretty damn close. And now two, he was telling her that Madara had ordered him to order her that she needed to listen in on the Five Kage Summit, which were _not _the orders he'd given earlier.

'Ah, but earlier we'd been in front of Sasuke and the others, and Sasuke might've pitched a fit if he'd known that I could diminish my energy and easily sneak into the meeting. He probably would've demanded that I do something in order to ensure he got the same access.'

And she could've, easily, Obito knew this but this clearly wasn't his intention, none of this was even about Sasuke as far as she could tell, but she was certain that neither he nor Zetsu were about to just spill their guts to her about it.

"Fine." She huffed, making her dissatisfaction with the change of plans clear even in her dispassionate sounding voice.

She turned to walk away from Zetsu who silently fazed through the floor in the hallway near the meeting room and paused right behind the wall to suddenly think about what these change of orders meant.

'Obito wants me to collect Intel on what the Kage plan to do in the face of the threat of the Akatsuki. Intel that Obito probably doesn't really need, the Kage being five that include the Raikage, the Tsuchikage, the Mizukage, the Hokage and the…Kazekage. The Kazekage being my former master Sabaku No Gaara, which means that I, his former ANBU who he is probably convinced is a lying, manipulative, rogue fiend, am going to be in the same room as Gaara. Be still my heart.'

G/M

When she arrived inside the room she was pleased to find that the guards seemed racked with tension and unable or uncaring about her newly shrink-wrapped chakra signature. Using a trick stolen and similar to Zetsu's she sat half in half out of the wall right across from Gaara. While this didn't seem like a good idea at first, she realized the farther away from Gaara she was the less temptation she would be presented with, e.g. confessing her undying love for him and or ratting out Obito and therefore herself.

It looked like the meeting hadn't started long ago as the… Mizukage was encouraging Gaara to continue with some thought he'd been having previous and reprimanding a man across from them to stop interrupting.

'The Tsuchikage…' Miyako squinted to get a better view, but the man was so tiny…

'Oh you've got to be kidding me, Onoki is still the Tsuchikage? His old ass needs to retire!' Miyako thought with a mental eye roll.

'This is not going to be easy for Gaara.' She scanned the rest of the occupants in the room, her eyes straying to the man next to Onoki.

'Raikage, possibly even more frustrating than Onoki, the two of them will bring hell upon this meeting.'

She gave a brief glance to Danzo, but she didn't know him well enough to pass judgment.

'But from what I've heard he's a sneaky bastard.'

She tried not to look at Gaara too long as she studied him, though she couldn't help but notice the that the dark rings were getting slightly better, which clearly meant that he'd been sleeping, though she calculated that they should've been progressively better than currently, which led her to believe that something was still interfering with his sleep, which naturally worried her.

'No'. She tapered down her gripping protective instinct, 'lest I give myself away.'

She instead flicked her eyes to the woman beside Gaara, a woman she hadn't seen in quite a while…

'Is that Mei? Oh my god she's so grown up now, quite beautiful if I do say so myself. How old is she? How has she been? I wonder if she's hitched or not? She was always so obsessed about marrying when she was younger that I at least hope she fulfilled that dream…'

Thoughts of Mei would have to wait though, because Gaara was speaking again and every word that came out of his mouth in Miyako's sincerest opinion was like gold.

"I was a former host before Akatsuki captured me and nearly killed me extracting the beast."

Miyako flinched at the memory and meticulously started counting the lines of kanji on the Kage hats to distract herself from her spiraling downward thoughts.

When she'd calmed down enough she tuned back in just in time to hear Onoki berate Gaara's sense of justice and she had to go back to counting just to calm herself from lashing out at the old geezer, this time she counted people.

'Gaara, Kankuro, Temari, Mei, Mizukage guard with a hidden Byakugan, Mizukage guard with…is that one of the blades that belonged to the Seven Swordsman? Whatever, Danzo, Konoha guard, Konoha guard, Onoki, female guard, male guard, he sort of reminds me of Chouji…anyway, A, Kumo guard, Kumo guard, Mifune, samurai, samurai. What is that? Eighteen? Wait a second…'

Miyako looked around to notice that the four guards from Kumo and Iwa stationed right next to her were gone.

'Ah man, I missed it. I should've known that A would flip shit though, he's so impatient.' She assessed the situation with a tiny snort as the guards broke apart from their defensive positions to settle back into position near their Kages, although the tension was palpable this time around.

After making sure that not a hair on Gaara's head was misplaced by the incident, she went back to "spying" on the summit.

'At least we can get to the interesting stuff now.' She thought as A started to shout out accusations against the other four villages about their part in forming Akatsuki and while that was true…

'A should really look into a mirror sometime, his country was nearly responsible for a war between Kumo and Konoha all because of the Hyuga's, what I wouldn't give to slap some sense into that thick skull…'

"And I know that there are some of you who used the Akatsuki for their own purposes!"

'"Used Akatsuki?"' Gaara murmured out loud, amazed, while Miyako thought it, only slightly off-kilter about the accusation.

'Well that had to get money from somewhere, and Kakuzu's supposed bounty hunting couldn't have racked in enough…' She reasoned, other than that she was entirely clueless, she tended to stay out of ninja affairs unless she was somehow dragged into them, just as Gaara was.

That didn't mean that A had a right to yell at Gaara for his ignorance though, after all, why the hell would the elders willingly divulge that sort of information? That would be like someone attempting to persuade Miyako into revealing her secret more than friendly affections for Gaara without knowing first that he reciprocated them. In short, there was no way in hell it was happening, even if he went back to Suna to ask.

She counted the number of eyes in the room, even though she already knew there were 38 before she tuned back in.

By that time Onoki was shouting curses at Raikage and defending his use of Akatsuki and it looked like a little entertaining fight would break out, that is until Danzo came out and told everyone her master's "real" identity.

'How does he know that? Wait, does Obito want people to know this, or is it a secret? Does that give me an excuse to attack? Should I kill him? I certainly am not against the idea…but that would mean I'd have to kill everyone else in the room too…might as well not, Sasuke would be kind of pissy if I took his kill anyway. I guess I'll just have to wait it out.'

Mifune said something long-winded about an alliance, making Miyako groan internally, because that would be admitting Obito was right, and she hated when Uchiha's were right.

A sneered, Danzo looked way too pleased for comfort, Onoki looked power-hungry, Mei seemed wary, smart of her, and Gaara seemed dubiously content…if that was even possible.

"Then who will lead this new army?" Onoki sounded confident that it should be him.

'I beg you Mifune, for the love of all that is holy, do _not _give it to Onoki, his ego is big enough…' Miyako groused in her head.

"You, Tsuchikage-sama, are too old and your loyalties are too constrained to lead the army." Mifune quickly dismissed much to Onoki's displeasure.

'Haha.' Miyako jabbed in her head.

"Likewise, the Kazekage is too young and too inexperienced with the ways of war."

Miyako sighed, though she knew the decision was bound to happen. Her precious Gaara's naivety didn't need to be soiled just yet.

"Mizukage-sama's country's past puts her at a disadvantage to lead and Raikage-sama…" Mifune trailed off, looking pointedly to the dented table and nearly sending Miyako tumbling out of the wall in her silent fit of snickers.

"So, what do you say, shall we let Hokage-sama lead this new alliance?"

Miyako froze and didn't even protest to A's obnoxious yelling as the ringing in her ears created the pleasant sensation of drowning out her murderous thoughts much better than counting did.

'This isn't right, I'd rather have A lead than Danzo any day, at least he doesn't carry around darkness rivaling Sasuke's like it's a freaking compliment.'

"If you will have me I will be honored."

'A bastard-ish way of saying "suck it losers", something feels fishy about this whole situation, but even if I figure it out there's not much I can do about it…' Still Miyako traced recent chakra paths, and although the still lingering hostile paths of the guards threw her off a bit it did nothing to hide the fresh spark from Danzo.

'Danzo's manipulating Mifune, he's got to be, there's no other explanation for his slight increase in chakra output, but how?' Unlike Hyuga's Miyako couldn't trace the specific origin of chakra in an opponent, unfortunately she would continuously grunt to herself, but it seems she wasn't the only one concerned with the recent turn of events.

"Hokage-sama, please reveal that left eye!" The Kiri guard suddenly demanded, but upon further inspection Miyako could see that his Byakugan was activated.

'Thank you uptight doujutsu thief!'

The Kiri guard chattered on about sensing Uchiha Shisui's ocular ability upon using his own. And the name vaguely rang a bell in Miyako's memory, but it was distant at best.

'Well that's going to bother me all day.' She grumbled in her head when she futilely could not access the part of her brain that seemed to know, instinctively almost, who that was.

'Ah well, I probably hated him.' Though her traitor emotions regarding the Uchihas did not agree as a strange sense of pain, grief and justice settled in her stomach.

She promptly ignored those feelings.

She tuned back in just when things were starting to lull, although she snorted at the thought that this meeting was turning out to be anything but a quiet affair, when all the sudden more drama popped up…literally.

'Zetsu?' She wondered curiously as the man…plant thing made what Gai might call a "Dynamic Entry".

That really wasn't important right now, what was important was the surmounting confusion and Miyako's need to question Zetsu's sanity for revealing himself…that is until she heard him rat Sasuke out.

'Wait, what the hell is going on? Why do I feel so out of the damn loop here? What is Obito doing?' Miyako might ask what Zetsu was even thinking, but she knew him well enough to know that he wouldn't do anything so risky unless Obito was directly involved and apparently her first assumption had been wrong, Obito wanted Sasuke to be ratted out.

Now why did that thought make her so angry?

True she and Sasuke had grown what outsiders might call "closer"- but what she was much more convinced was a relationship of parasitism, as Sasuke was not above using her, but that didn't necessarily mean that she hated his guts any less. This opportunity, in theory, should have been elating to her. This opportunity should have made her want to kiss the ground that Obito walked on for the first and last time, but instead she found that she wanted to rid the world of one Uchiha instead of two and it unfortunately wasn't Sasuke.

Her panic over the thought of Sasuke actually being found was warring over her panic of these new emotions, though she was glad when A snapped Zetsu's neck so he would shut up, because she honestly felt that she would've if he hadn't.

Several orders were enlisted in the next few seconds and Miyako jolted as a pulse of air signaling the Kumo team's departure passed her. She clasped her hands to avoid physically holding them back.

The draft was annoying though, and with a dull eye she looked to see that A had busted down a wall.

'He is going to have to pay so much property damage…' She thought blandly, counting the cracks splintering up the remaining pieces of wall to keep from running after them, but it wasn't working very well.

'**You will stay where you are.**'

'Obito-sama? What's going on?'

'**Do not be concerned with Sasuke, he still retains some use.**'

That, not surprisingly, did not make her feel better, but there wasn't much she could do about it, not while Obito was ordering her to do so and as a consequence it felt like her body was waging three wars at once.

'I have to listen to what Obito says but I don't _want_ to, although I have no earthly clue why I should be concerned about Sasuke's wellbeing anyway so it shouldn't bother me that he's ordering me to do as I was originally ordered. And to think all this could've been avoided if I had just told Gaara the truth from the beginning.'

There was nothing to be done about it now though, not unless Obito would somehow like to wish for Miyako to jump into the past.

'That's probably not the first time period I'd travel to given the opportunity though…' She stopped herself mid-thought; it was best not to open that door of pain and misery, especially not while she still technically had a job to do.

Gaara was giving a lecture when she re-tuned in, a feat in itself if that words weren't taken into account, but the meaning…

'No…no I could've told him, he's…better this way. There was no way I could've given him all that Naruto has given him and for that I am truly grateful to you Uzumaki Naruto…as well as extremely jealous.'

"You speak of some hard things very easily for being so young, but you still don't know how to run a village kid. Why don't you ask us, your elders; some questions? I'm sure we'll be able to answer any of your questions, right Danzo?"

'You blithering old man! Keel over and die already why don't you? Your arrogance does not make you better than anyone else!' Miyako internally seethed. Come to think of it, she was fairly close to the geezer, all she'd literally have to do was reach out and choke the living daylights out of him. It shouldn't be too hard…

Kankuro expressed his outrage enough for the four of them, but there was nothing sweeter than hearing Gaara school Onoki at his own game.

'Gah! Why does he have to be so cool…and handsome, eloquent, serious, sexy…okay bad thoughts.'

By the time Miyako managed to fish herself out of her fantastic, but very distracting and short-lived, fantasy Gaara and the others had decided to go and join the battle against Sasuke, which only made her want to die from overloading panic.

'No! I can't have Gaara in the same room as Sasuke while I struggle through these feelings of wanting to protect them both!' This turn of events only fueled her frustration with herself. 'It shouldn't even be a contest! Gaara is the winner, every time! And yet the thought of me sitting idly by and watching him kill Sasuke makes me want to…to destroy my own lamp!'

This froze her. Destroy her own lamp? Was she serious? Would she really _willing_ commit suicide…over Sasuke?

'Where the hell is all of this coming from? I would've gladly let Gaara maim and or kill Sasuke months ago, what the hell changed?' She felt as though something had to have happened from the time she was brought under Obito's wing to now, but she couldn't put her finger on what and that's what bugged her. 'My memory shouldn't be so clouded, unless this is some internal device, but why would I purposely make myself forget my sudden attitude change towards Sasuke? That doesn't make sense, so the only thing that does would be an external catalyst…I have a headache.'

She moved her thoughts elsewhere while the remaining members in the summit hall became a buzz in the back of her mind, the first order of business being…

'Where the hell is Obito?! Furthermore, what is the meaning of ratting Sasuke out to the council?' She could vaguely feel the fighting going on below but considering she was tied to neither Sasuke nor Gaara with as much strength as Obito she could only feel that their hearts were still beating.

Good; as long as they didn't kill each other things would be fine.

She resigned herself to sit for a long wait while the ninjas sorted out their problems, but she severely underestimated the time of an average ninja battle because within ten minutes Sasuke was spotted on the roof looking intensely at Danzo.

'Huh, I'd forgotten how fast ninja battles were, I must be getting rusty.' When she thought back on the battles she'd witnessed recently though they seemed much longer. It must be the dialogue and flashbacks…

Mifune struck and Sasuke pared, Danzo and the Konoha guards fled and the Kiri guard went after them, Sasuke went to chase and got cut off by her…ex-ex-ex-ex master.

"Ah, so the Uchiha do have handsome men." She purred and the sound made Miyako half cringe and half smile wistfully.

"Don't interfere." Sasuke's voice was cold and she couldn't help the tiny surge of protectiveness that overcame her for her four times ex master, though that was beaten down quickly by the urge to yank Sasuke away from the Mizukage by any means necessary.

"It's a shame I'll have to melt such a handsome man."

That really made Miyako panic and just as she coaxed a bit more of her body from it forced paralysis to materialize further into the room, the cold voice of her master stopped her again.

'**Not yet**.'

She wanted to rage against him for such words; couldn't he see that Sasuke was in imminent danger?! But the order was clear though unspoken, she needed to stay put, unless something drastic happened.

She watched the scene unfold with something akin to fascination as Sasuke fended off Mei's and Chojuro's attacks with power his body clearly couldn't handle until he nearly collapsed with the pain. Miyako's body was nearly out of the wall by then though her chakra still masked, when Zetsu decided to make himself useful.

One of the aberrations crawled over to her dark corner and smiled cheekily when she glared down at it.

"What?" He stage whispered, and she gathered that this was the real Zetsu, which only heightened her glare. She was satisfied when he winced minutely: that meant that her glares were slowly growing to Uchiha levels.

"Why was I not informed of this? What is the meaning of all of it anyway?" She demanded gruffly, though her voice still managed to show some measure of dispassion.

"I think you know why." Zetsu chortled sadistically, mounting more paranoia onto Miyako's steady growing pile of problems.

Miyako's eyes darted back to the scene just in time to see Onoki release himself from Zetsu's jutsu causing intuitive warning sirens to scream in her head.

She unphased from the wall quickly, silently moving like a snake in the shadows near Sasuke and her newfound worst enemy.

"I can't believe someone like you managed to beat Deidara. Ah well. Personally I have nothing against you, but everyone wants you dead so I'll do them a favor." Then he was making hand signs, Miyako wasn't aware of what the hand signs were for but as she ran all the justus she remembered Onoki possessing in her head the only one she could come up with to destroy Sasuke quickly and efficiently would be…

'Shit that's dust release!'

She didn't think; she just ran as fast as she possibly could and threw herself over Sasuke. Then she focused on shielding, compressing and hiding them all while bearing the brunt of the jutsu.

Her mind was a red haze as she robotically hauled both she and Sasuke, invisible now to maintain the presumed thought that he was dead, to a dark corner of the room.

She quietly caught her breath as she saw Gaara and A reenter the war zone, Gaara snapping for Kankuro immediately, presumably to aid in freeing the others.

While she watched she couldn't help but wonder if he'd be calling her to aid had the circumstances been different. Would Temari and Kankuro have allowed her to take one of their places had she, perfect in health, remained? Had they she would most assuredly be participating in the capture of Sasuke instead of cradling him like a mother bear protectively does to her injured cub. Had they, she would've probably been most likely responsible for injuring Sasuke instead of saving him from further injury. Had they, she probably wouldn't be thanking every twinkling star out there that he wasn't turned to dust while contemplating suicide if he had.

A sudden surge of power brought her out of her misery and the dark voice that constantly haunted her dreams and waking snapped her from her migraine-inducing thoughts.

"Relax Raikage, you still have a chance." He purred in promise from his perch, his one eye glinting mirthfully.

"Sasuke?" Karin wondered/ cheered, probably because "Madara" wasn't showing any proof of his promise.

"My name is Uchiha Madara and this-"He motioned to Miyako's dark corner and although ever fiber in her traitorous body was screaming to remain hidden she stepped out into the light, Sasuke tucked safely in her arms.

"This is my quick-thinking apprentice. We're here to explain something to you."

Raikage was seething, not only because Sasuke was still alive but most likely because someone managed to sneak in right under their noses and save him.

"What?!" He thundered, which Miyako could agree was an appropriate verb for the rash leader; everything he did was flashy and attention-grabbing.

"I want to tell you about my goal, the moon's eye plan."

Of course when Obito, ehem, "Madara" said "we" he really meant, "shut up Miyako and stay still while I explain the whole plan".

It was fine with her; she'd rather not have to give herself away by speaking, even though it would be fairly easy to disguise her voice. Plus she was pretty tongue-tied what with Sasuke's injuries occupying half her thoughts and Gaara's reactions the other half.

So she would tune out this plan that she'd heard hundreds of times and simply observe the room, it was both calming and distracting, two things she really needed.

Except when A was in a room _calm_ was not in the list of emotions permeating the air.

She barely managed to flicker away with Sasuke as A tried to smash a hole through Obito, failing as usual, and sank into the shadows towing Karin along with her just because.

'**Bring Sasuke and Karin to me; I will get them to safety**.'

If Miyako was allowed to be perfectly blunt she would've told him "hell no!" but considering that in the end game he was her master above everyone else she did as she was told.

She appeared next to him instantly, reluctantly allowing Sasuke to be sucked in by his Mangekyo Sharingan.

"Karin, heal Sasuke for me." And then she was sucked in as well.

Miyako twitched in restrained need to go along and heal Sasuke herself, but reasoned that Karin was far too infatuated with Sasuke, heaven knows why, to let anything bad become of them wherever "Madara" sent the two.

"Now that you're all ready to listen…"

Gaara started the questioning looking particularly impassive to mask his frustration and curiosity.

'I'm glad to know that I can still read him so well after so many months apart.'

"Madara" answered all questions promptly, explaining the moon eye plan and its connection to the original Juubi container, his sons, the power of the Rinnegan, Sharingan and Sasuke's purpose in all of this.

It was safe to say that Miyako was not calm upon hearing how Obito manipulated Sasuke into facing off against the Kages, even worse that he originally planned to take them hostage.

'He put Sasuke's life on the line for a chance, just to further his own goals.'

It shouldn't have been a surprise, she'd known from the beginning that Obito intended to use Sasuke as far as his worth permitted, and she could vaguely remember that she hadn't had a problem with it…at first.

'So these feelings happened in between Sasuke's capture and now, but those are too many months and too many events to simply narrow it down to the source…'

Needless to say Miyako was seeing a red haze throughout the entire rest of the ordeal, and although her figure remained stiff and poised on the outside, inside of the protection of her cloak she was shaking in rage.

'Sasuke could've gotten killed because of Obito's selfishness, hell Sasuke could've gotten killed because of his own! The Uchiha's think that just because they have this doujutsu that they're gods, but they're too blind to see that their arrogance is what got them wiped out in the first place! They deserve every punishment they get! If only I didn't have to be dragged along for the ride…'

Obito's definition of hope ran through her head as she lost herself in downward thoughts again. From where she stood he had more than a valid point. Obito possessed seven of the ten Bijuu, he had the last surviving Uchiha with which to mold on his side, the perfect spy and as far as they knew a nearly unstoppable genie at his command. All this without even factoring the things that even she Sasuke and Zetsu didn't know about. What hope did the five nations have when one was looked at as a traitor, another as the birthplace of the Akatsuki, another with a questionable leader, and another with a leader looked at as too young to lead? Their weapons consisted of every viable Shinobi, a suitable army if you didn't factor in that they were all _mortal_, and two Bijuu that they couldn't stand to lose. With all this in mind it looked as if their only hope was to give up and give in, to resign to the "peace" her master could give them and to fall into the Genjutsu and out of their free will.

Just like her. They would all become slaves to Obito just like her.

It was terrifying.

She couldn't imagine any of these people as Obito's slaves; they didn't deserve that life, not even the most aggravating of them. No one should have to suffer under his thumb like she had, especially not…

'Gaara. Oh Gaara you shouldn't have to suffer at all. You shouldn't have to suffer ever again.'

Through the red haze she could see a tiny spot of hope left, it was the color of sea foam and it burned right through she and Obito like they were nothing.

She clung to that hope desperately, even after the haze dissipated and they along with it she etched it into her memory. She couldn't forget, she wouldn't forget. That color was her resolve to cling to the idea of hope when everything seemed lost.

'That is what Gaara truly looks like, he is hope.'

G/M

"Miyako!"

Said woman blinked. Once…twice, where was she?

"Hai?"

"I've been calling you for three minutes straight." Sasuke growled. "What are you thinking about?"

The words slipped out of her mouth unchecked. "I wonder if Suigetsu and Juugo are dead?"

Sasuke glared nastily at her, "are you still going on about that? I told you that they served their purpose, it might be better off for them if they're dead anyway."

Well since she'd already basically dug her grave she might as well keep digging. "You know who you sound like? Orochimaru, he valued human lives the same way."

"Don't compare me to that psychopath. I have a mission, a purpose, he was mad."

"Mad with power much like you are and at this rate you're both going to end up in the same place."

Miyako's head throbbed but her expression stayed the same as the cave wall bit into her over sensitized skin.

"Don't you dare think you can lecture me Maki. I didn't see you batting an eyelash to slaughter those people during the Chuunin exams."

She had to give that to him.

"You're right. But you should also keep in mind that I could've just as easily slaughtered Konoha ninja to save face and I didn't."

"Because you care so much about your comrades, right?" Sasuke sneered in her face.

"Why do you think you're still alive?" She droned, ignoring the sticky wetness of her blood dripping down her skin.

She was abruptly dropped at this statement, not gently but at least not jarringly enough to injure further. It was a mild surprise; after all Sasuke claimed to be a statue of cold resolve and here he was showing acute, very acute mind you, regret for his wrath. Furthermore he was expressing a miniscule amount, atom sized, of gratitude.

"How are your injuries?" He grunted out.

Now that he reminded her that one sided scuffle with the wall was smarting just a bit. Maybe she should be brutally honest in saying that they weren't going to get any better with him manhandling her, but it was in her nature to brush off people's concern and appease.

"Fine." That didn't mean she had to be pleasant about it though.

Sasuke grumbled to himself as Miyako tenderly probed her head while the various cuts on her back self-healed.

"You should be more worried about yourself," as always, "is the pain diminishing?"

Sasuke had begrudgingly informed her of the side effects of Susanoo as well as his daily condition.

"Yes." He could be just as curt as she was about his wellbeing.

"Very good." Miyako flinched minutely as Obito's voice purged the low light of the cave before he himself even entered it and made to look steadfastly at her previous aggressor, the wall still coated in her steadily dripping blood, so she wouldn't do anything rash.

"I imagine that you'll be up and running again soon, Sasuke?" The boy gave a noncommittal grunt.

"I'd also like to congratulate you Miyako for your very heroic quick thinking." Obito purred, but there was a dark accusing undercurrent that had her muscles straining to stay still.

She met his eyes and nodded once to acknowledge the comment, what she did not expect was to get stuck in his gaze.

"It's a shame Sasuke," Obito started even though he clearly wasn't looking at him and staring into Miyako's very soul, "that you didn't get to battle Danzo as you wanted, but don't worry you'll soon get another chance."

Everything Miyako was made up of screamed against this idea and her frame quivered because of it. She forced herself to rip her eyes away from that maddening swirl and calm down, focusing instead on her blood still smattered on the wall.

Red, red, red, red…

"Check over Sasuke before joining me in my room Miyako, we have much to discuss." She faintly heard Obito command, but she barely had eyes for anything other than the color red.

Sasuke sighed, grunting behind her as he forced his muscles to carry him directly behind her.

"Come on Miyako, you don't want to keep Madara waiting."

Miyako for her part didn't respond.

"Miyako," Sasuke started in a growl, "if you're thinking about Suigetsu and Juugo again."

Still she did not twitch.

"Miyako!" In his impatience Sasuke grabbed her shoulder and forced her around.

"Let's-"

He paused, confused, and blinked in astonishment.

"Miyako…what…?"

He floundered around for words, his genius brain in overdrive as he stared into her eyes…no, not her eyes…

"What the hell is going on?! Miyako!" Sasuke growled, angrier than he'd ever been at the girl in his life. In his wrath his eyes bled red and his palm shot out to jar her.

A resounding smack echoed across the room and finally Miyako blinked, confusion written on her face.

"Sasuke?"

"What the hell do you think you're doing Maki!"

Miyako recognized a demand when she heard one, but she couldn't for the life of her understand what she did wrong now, all she'd been doing was staring at the wall, but Sasuke was known for his impatience so…

"I'm sorry," she replied robotically, "I was just trying to remain calm-"

"You think that you can get away with mocking his memory!" Sasuke continued as if she hadn't even spoken.

"What? Sasuke what are you-"She was cut off by her own uncharacteristic shriek as Sasuke grabbed her by the back of the head and forced her face into the nearest reflective surface.

"That, what is the meaning of _that_!"

_That_ was a good word for it. She didn't see what the big deal was at first, dark hair framing an olive toned face, pink lips and a royal nose but then…

Her eyes, they were…red. The same color as her blood and the same color as the haze from the summit, but it couldn't just have been the color that set Sasuke off it was the combination.

Red and black, specifically black shapes, but that was all that she saw before she blinked. That was all she needed to see.

Sasuke thought that Miyako had imitated Itachi's Sharingan and just the fact that she had nearly seen it herself made her hyperventilate.

But she didn't have the Sharingan, her eyes were purple. Her eyes _are_ purple.

"You're seeing things, Sasuke." Miyako gulped out as her _purple_ eyed reflection stared back at her. She watched the way that the reflection's mouth moved as it answered: "nothing's different."

Sasuke's coal black eyes were narrowed in disbelief and the reflection searched hers as if looking for proof. When he couldn't find it, because there wasn't any there, he relinquished his death grip on her hair.

She tried to act nonchalant, smoothing her hair out as she gave Sasuke what she wanted to be a casual smile but was really an unsteady grimace. "Well since you can move like that I'd say you'll be fine in no time." She tried to joke, but it fell flat at the end as she gazed at his face.

He looked lost. He looked painfully lost.

"I…I have to go…"

She couldn't deal with a lost Sasuke, because it made her feel as if she'd lost something too.

G/M

**Okay, sorry for making you guys wait so long. I'd give out my reasons but you'd probably only take them as excuses, so I beg your forgiveness. Since it summer I'll try to find time to update faster! But no promises because I'm bad at those. **

**In other news the next chapter will fulfill GMNASAI's request! Look forward to it people! **

**Skillful, Fantastic Acronym. **


	6. Fallen from Grace

A/N: Alright, everyone give it up for chapter six! In this chapter "Madara" discusses his strategies for the war, but because Miyako is a badass that can multi-task she decides to relive her older days of when she was a princess preparing for her very own war. This is partially for GMNASAI to as per his request.

Review love time!

Alright on with the story, Miyako?

Miyako: Just as I fell from grace as you will see in this chapter, SFA has also fallen from the privilege of possibly ever owning _Naruto_.

Thanks. You're getting better at these sneering disclaimers every week Miyako. Sarcasm.

Fallen from Grace

Obito was babbling about something to Zetsu, Zetsu was being an attentive listener, Kisame had recently gone to hunt down the remaining two Jinchurikis, Sasuke was probably in a sleep somewhere close to a coma while Karin probably drooled over his body and Miyako was looking pleasantly blank as she sat in the meeting like a good little porcelain doll.

Meanwhile her thoughts were anything but blank, unpleasantly so.

G/M

It was that one word from that one particular mouth that triggered the memory.

War; from Obito Uchiha's mouth and it seemed suddenly like déjà vu.

She let the thoughts pull her under in grateful distraction.

G/M

They say wars can be started over many things. Obito wanted to start a war over the argument of peace, other nations have started wars in an effort to gain power and even some large scale wars were started over the thing in this world said to be the most powerful, love.

The Kurosawa-Senju-Uchiha war was a silent one on a nearly microscopic scale in the grand scheme of things and yet the consequences were larger than anything they could've ever foretold.

And it all started because of Kurosawa Miyako.

G/M

Miyako supposed that her sins were the deciding factor of her rotten luck with the deities and the first one she figured she'd committed was giving the time of day to a commoner.

It all started on a surprisingly less-than-scorching day in the summer of the Kingdom of Wind; way back when Miyako was not "Maki" or "Raccoon" or even just plain Miyako sans surname, but Princess Kurosawa Miyako future ruler of the Kingdom of Wind.

She was walking leisurely around the castle, her fingers scraping lightly against the sandstone absentmindedly as she thought about a million and one things that she needed to get done by the end of the day. There might or might not have been guards following her, but as she looked back on it they were probably a fairly far distance away.

She'd just rounded the corner and into the courtyard that was currently closed off to any recreational activities the civilians wished to partake in. Miyako was only mildly confused about this until she remembered that the castle was scrambling to prepare for visitors, though her father was adamant about keeping who these visitors were to himself.

No matter, she was here to clear her thoughts not trouble them further.

She lingered in the abandoned courtyard; observing the various fountains and sparse plants that littered the area as she got lost in the thoughts of responsibility.

'One day this will all be mine to rule, maintain…protect.' She was bred to be prepared for this future but the thought of holding that much power in her hands still scared the crap out of her.

Before she'd known it she had ended up near a little pool closest to the gate that separated the village from the castle and was dipping her feet languidly in the cool water as thoughts of the past consumed her.

'What if I can't handle it? I don't want to follow the same path my mother did but I can't help but feel that it's ingrained in my genetics.' She looked up to the looming wall and aspired to be like the structure, tall, fortified sturdy and sure of its purpose. She wanted that, not these endless questions.

Suddenly her image of blue sky against gray wall was distorted by a round speck sailing through the air towards her. Naturally her first thought was alarm.

'Could it be an attack? No, I'd have heard commotion outside the palace walls, the intruder would have to have breached the first wall to the village. Unless…could this be an inside job? The beginnings of a coup?' As melancholy as her previous thoughts were, she would've gladly taken them over the rising panic her imagination caused.

The speck was still soaring in a high arc above and careening towards her in what she distorted was a viciously accurate attack. And by her judgment there was no way she'd be able to move in time now to avoid it, so she braced herself in a fetal position to bear the brunt of this attack for her Kingdom.

'Well if this kills me at least I won't have to make any troubling decisions.'

Just as she had resolved herself to potential death she heard a quiet plop nearby followed by another and then a soft crunching sound followed finally by a tap.

'…Am I dead?'

Miyako peeked from under the safety of her arms with slotted eyes to discern that _no_, the Kingdom of Wind appeared to be still intact and furthermore she herself had no scratch on her.

'Well that's a relief.'

She let her arms fall beside her as she curiously looked for what caused her inner commotion, but could not find the source anywhere.

'I guess I've been out in the heat too long. How disconcerting that I let my imaginings rule me. Luckily no one was around to catch this embarrassing act and none will therefore be the wiser.'

With that in mind she pulled herself out of the pool to retire inside and have her head examined, though her reason would remain her own, when he foot made contact with something solid.

Curiously she peered downward to be met with a…red ball.

'Aha! I knew I wasn't crazy!' She thought triumphantly on the inside while remaining composed on the outside; no need for everyone to know about her inner musings.

She picked up the object and studied it with a "royal head" as her tutors liked to call it; turning the ball round and round with unblinking eyes.

'Well it clearly came from outside the palace, although whatever little boy or girl kicked this should immediately be drafted into the knighthood.' She snorted a little on the outside at her own joke. 'And since they can't cross over to retrieve it I suppose I'll have to go and inquire upon whose red ball this is.'

The only problem with this plan was Miyako's orders to _stay inside_ the palace walls all week, and while normally she would disregard these orders they'd come directly from her father and she hated displeasing her father.

'But he has to understand that I'm sixteen and that I hate being cooped up. Moreover, when one usually orders a sixteen year old not to do something that makes them want to do it.'

Miyako nodded in decision; she would return the ball to its original owner, it was only fair seeing as there wasn't a soul in the Kingdom of Suna that could conquer the palace walls much less dare to.

It was when she was taking a step towards the gates to go about her mission that her steadfast image of the blue sky and gray wall was interrupted again by black shape.

'Another ball?' She wondered. But no, that couldn't be it, this image was not sailing through the air, rather it appeared at the top of the wall, the sun shining brightly behind to obscure the figure before scaling down the other side. The side she was standing on. Which means inside the castle.

'Wait a moment, this is a person? But-but…how? Surely…' She had no time to wonder if this really wasn't all just some attack on her life as her brain was stuck on the idea of someone actually maneuvering the palace wall.

Don't laugh, it was an incredible feat, one would have to have some sort of immense control of their muscles to scale a 70 foot tall wall with barely any footholds, not to mention the phenomenal show of stealth required just to get past the guards both on the inside and the outside.

It was no wonder Miyako was dumbfounded.

'Neither knight nor samurai can do that…who is this person?' Miyako was not feeling as she should, afraid, but rather impressed and curious as to who could manage a feat, which is the way she justified patiently awaiting the figure's approach instead of running off like a good royal and tattle tailing to the guards.

Patience, unfortunately, wasn't one of those virtues she possessed.

She met the intriguing figure halfway, only to find that this figure was in fact a man…or rather a boy?

He was half-crouched, his eyes darting nervously round the castle grounds in search of guards, and while this normally would've been suspicious, Miyako just somehow knew that this boy was the owner of this red ball and therefore no threat to her safety.

"Ahem?"

For someone who managed to scale a 70 foot wall the boy sure did scare easily, but it was all so amusing to Miyako.

"I'm guessing this is yours?"

The boy, who'd fallen on his butt and the abrupt sound of her voice shot up and nervously held out his hands in a gesture she assumed was half recognition half placating.

Miyako had to incline her head up a bit to see him, but not enough to cause discomfort, a trait her mother would call "pleasantly tall". He was curiously pale considering they lived in a desert and were constantly at the sun's mercy, but not "freakishly" so. He had long fingers attached to callous hands dusted lightly with dirt, 'probably from climbing walls' Miyako thought, though the dirt underneath his nails looked long caked in. 'An artisan perhaps, he has the hands for it.' His face was oval shaped, like it was meant for the hands to cup, his lips were a pale red and thin and hormones strayed her thoughts 'he must not be a good kisser than…' he had high cheekbones and the nose of a royal 'whatever that means' Miyako snorted internally, but the most striking two features were saved for last.

His eyes were a moss green and…enchanting. Miyako realized that the thought was stupidly cliché, but she did find herself having to blink rapidly to get her thoughts on track after a brief encounter with those eyes. Arguably though, his hair was even more stunning.

Red, not quite blood but the brightest shade she'd ever laid eyes on even with russet weaving through it. It seemed to have a life of its own as it light up with the sun's rays and threw patterns of glimmering light into her eyes.

"Uh…why are you staring at me?"

His voice was…alright; really it paled in comparison to the hair and eyes.

"You haven't answered my question." Miyako shot back in her patented "leader" tone.

"I did, I said yes."

Really his voice was like the tinkling of a breathy wind chime, so soft yet laced with so much contradicting confidence that she didn't know how to feel.

So she went for condescending, it had worked on all the other royal suitors.

"I heard no such thing." Miyako huffed.

"Well I can't help what you heard." The boy drawled with a dubious look between a smile and a nervous grimace. A nervous smile?

When she didn't reply, still trying to decide if she liked this boy or not, said boy continued.

"Can I have it back?"

"Did you kick it over the wall?" Miyako interrogated.

"Yes on accident, I apologize, miss."

'Miss? Can he really not recognize me?'

"How did you climb the wall?" Miyako pressed further, ignoring the comment for now.

The boy seemed more nervous than amused now.

"Uh…"

"Do you even know who I am?"

She really couldn't help it; the miss comment had thrown her for a loop. Law dictated that the boy should've been bowing to her the moment he saw her and yet here he was, looking her squarely in the eye without a clue as to who she could be.

It was oddly exhilarating.

"Oh! I apologize…?" He bowed his head as he trailed off, cutting her off from the only speck of green for miles.

"Mimi." She lied smoothly, "is that any way you treat a lady from the land of Fire?"

"Again I apologize Lady Mimi, I had no idea." He bowed shallowly at the waist and avoided her eyes at all costs.

'So gullible, if it wasn't a little maddening it would be cute.' Miyako thought, following his head movements.

"Never mind that now, you still haven't answered my question, do you intend to keep me waiting?" Miyako demanded haughtily, playing her part of the spoiled heiress up well with a cock of her hip and a raise of the brow.

"Ah, no, you see-"

"Miyako-hime?!"

They both cursed, she internally and he externally.

"Ah, can I please-"

"May I please you mean? Who taught you your manners?"

The boy was starting to get frustrated, but Miyako was not so much intimidated as she was amused, she couldn't seem to dredge up any negative emotion around this commoner.

"May I please have the ball back?"

"You have avoided my question, but I suppose you'll just have to return tomorrow to answer it now won't you?"

She was just teasing him, but the boy wasn't that cute for nothing, he clearly had a few cells missing.

"What? No please-"

"Or else," She continued, shoving the red item into his chest, "I'll rat you out to the guards, and you wouldn't want that now would you?"

Or perhaps she wasn't teasing him….

"Y-you-"

"Same time, same place or you're busted." She grinned widely at his panicked look and with another called of "Miyako-hime" he was gone, having tossed the ball over the wall and running rapidly along the perimeter and out of her line of vision.

"Here." Miyako finally answered after the umpteenth call of the guards. She let them lead her around the rest of the castle on her walk and try as she might she could not find the boy anywhere.

Strangely, she couldn't wait for the next day.

G/M

His name was Haru, which Miyako found was very appropriate what with the way his hair seemed to attract the sun, Garasuno, as it turned out his family specialized in glassblowing.

They talked about a lot of things that next day, his older siblings, both boys who he dreaded being around for too long, his parents, who he loved very much, their business, Miyako thought triumphantly that she knew he was an artisan, and his strange nickname around the kingdom.

"Yeah, they keep calling me Sabaku no Haru." He admitted sheepishly, rolling the ball around and around in his hands.

"Haru of the Desert? Why's that?" Miyako wondered aloud as they walked the perimeter of the castle, the guards a few paces behind.

"Well, I like to go out and collect the sand needed to make the glass, and so the others have commented that they see me more out in the desert than in the actual village and that's how I got that nickname." He shrugged, dismissing the story.

"You don't like it?" Miyako laughed lightly at his expression.

"I don't know." He murmured, giving her a side glance. "What do you think?" He suddenly whirled around to face her, a mocking look of solemnity on his face.

"Oh, well…" She drawled. "I think it makes you sound sort of…dangerous." She purred, tracing one finger up Haru's chest and delighting in the nervous bob of his Adam's apple.

"I g-guess than…it's not so bad…"

G/M

They saw each other every day that week, Miyako would be waiting for him by the little pool where she almost thought she'd died and Haru would mysteriously climb the wall every day and join her for a walk, as she was still confined to the palace walls. They talked and got to know more of another as the week wore on, but somehow, no matter how Miyako pestered or wheedled, Haru had still managed to keep it his wall-climbing abilities a secret.

'It's probably because he's so cute that it's distracting.' She reasoned, because every time she brought it up Haru would brush it off with a vague answer and somehow change the subject and cause her to forget all about it.

'Damn his charms.'

Unfortunately their quality time soon had to come to an end, with Miyako, who was still known as "Mimi" to Haru, half-lying to the common boy that she could not see him next week because she was being entertained by the Kurosawa family for the remainder of her stay.

In truth it was the exact opposite, she was being forced to entertain, along with her father, King Nori of Fire Country and his ever-present followers the Uchiha. They were meant to discuss a peace treaty that would effectively end the ceaseless feuding between their kingdoms in the next week, but it was debated, by most of the kingdom, that this meeting was for naught, which was why Miyako was already so frustrated.

For some unfathomable reason the Uchiha hated the Senju, the Senju didn't openly announce, unlike the Uchiha, their hatred for the Uchiha, but nevertheless it was still there. These feuding clans would be the main reason nothing would be accomplished the upcoming week. What was even worse was King Nori would back up anything the Uchiha claimed without batting an eyelash; Miyako swore that the Uchiha were somehow brainwashing him.

She hated the idea of having to abandon her budding relationship with the commoner boy to listen to endless squabble between clans, but she really had no choice in the matter.

'And besides,' she began to reprimand herself as she finished pinning a rose in her hair, 'I shouldn't be so caught up in such a simple boy, there's no way anything remotely close to a _relationship_ could come out of it anyway.'

Satisfied with her hair pin and the way the loose locks draped over her shoulder she smoothed her dress down one last time just as a knock resounded on the door.

"It is time Miyako-hime."

Indeed, she thought with a sudden strange sinking feeling, but time for what?

G/M

The first few hours had been pleasant.

Miyako's father, King Daisuke, had brought out all he could in the charm department as he showed the tired King and several important members of the Uchiha, Miyako hadn't bothered to remember the titles or names of any of them, to their rooms to take a rest before supper. And subsequently at supper the Fire Kingdom looked very pleased with the arrangements of a feast fit for such royal guests, even if the Senju were in the same room as them. They made polite conversation with the King and a few of the Uchiha even deigned to ask Miyako questions, though she stuck dutifully to the rule that children, especially girls her etiquette tutors liked to remind her, were to be seen and not heard.

Usually she protested the rule, but when doing unpleasant things such as this she found she didn't mind it so much.

The drama started the minute everything settled down in the ironically named war room. That was when Miyako wished that she could be anywhere else.

"So you Senju are scrambling to make a peace treaty, hm? Have you found that you can no longer match up to our power?" A male Uchiha towards the back mocked.

As expected the Senju coiled up in tense protest, rising to the challenge presented to them like the trained warriors they were.

"I believe we are here to discuss a peace treaty." King Kurosawa interjected before one of the lower Senju could react, "and I would appreciate it if the Uchiha could show civility and not pick fights with my warriors like adults."

A soft hiss on the side of the Uchiha almost made Miyako smile, almost.

"Or could it be that you have wasted my time and do not desire a treaty at all?" The King finished.

"No, absolutely not Kurosawa-san." King Nori protested with a polite smile, a contradiction Miyako begrudgingly admitted she would have to learn to master when she became queen.

"Then let us begin the negotiations-"The King started only to have his quest for peace interrupted again, this time by a Senju.

"Forgive me Daisuke-sama, but I must ask the Fire Kingdom a pressing question."

Miyako barely identified him as Yoshito, General of the Wind Kingdom's army and trusted advisor to her father, which is the only reason the King even allowed his impudence.

"You may speak." Miyako did not miss the begrudging tone underlying the calm in her father's voice though.

"I wish to know why the Fire Kingdom seeks to have peace with us now when we have been rejected at all other times."

Nothing could hide that suspicious tone Yoshito was using, not even the forced politeness thinly veiling it, but Miyako found that she couldn't necessarily disagree with his sudden concern. If she knew anything about Uchiha's it's that they didn't just give up when they wanted something, so this peace treaty seemed almost senseless if it were looked at from the eyes of an Uchiha. That is, unless they had a larger goal in mind that trumped their former concerns.

That had to be it.

King Nori looked ready to have a fit and Miyako was rolling her eyes in preparation for the sheer amount of Uchiha ass kissing that was sure to come pouring out, but an Uchiha, one at the head of the group she observed, intercepted the fight before it could happen.

"Yoshito-san, on behalf of the Uchiha clan, I apologize if our sudden presence here has made you uncomfortable."

Miyako blinked, and then blinked some more and the only thing she could think was 'well that was unexpected.' She was more than sure that the Senju were feeling the exact same way too. In fact she knew.

'You know, for warriors they aren't very practiced in keeping their emotions in check.' But she supposed that she had more training in reigning in her emotions due to being a royal. It was beat into her the day her mother left that visible _real_ emotions could be taken and twisted in any way an adversary saw fit and that her first line of protection lied within safeguarding those emotions.

Her father's face was just as pleasantly blank, if not innocently curious, as her own. "That is very thoughtful of you, Tsuyo-san, but Yoshito-san has posed a very good question and I would feel better with an honest answer."

Miyako hoped one day that she could master that subtle way of demanding just as well as her father, but she'd just have to settle with being damn proud of him for the time being.

"We are very stubborn people Daisuke-sama, but even we can understand that the time of peace is upon us. Why fight the inevitable? We only wish to ally with you before old festering wounds get out of hand."

She observed the handsome, charming smile on the man's face and reasoned that this Tsuyo had to be the Head of the Uchiha clan.

'But if that's so than he's also the General of the Uchiha warriors, which means that he certainly had a hand in the antagonism shared between our two countries.'

The Fire Kingdom did not operate like the Wind Kingdom, in that they did not separate their clan leaders from their leadership in the armada. Miyako was sure it had something to do with the Uchiha's lust for absolute power over anything they could get their hands on, but they would probably argue a more sound reason. Senju on the other hand had no problem splitting up tasks between themselves, demonstrated by the appearance of both the General of the Senju Warriors and the Head of the Senju clan at this little peace negotiation meeting. In this respect it would seem that the Senju were playing up that the Wind Kingdom was "the bigger man", but Miyako knew better that they would just as likely to blow this negotiation meeting as the Uchiha were and the odds were looking in the Uchiha's favor at this moment.

Still, it remained that this want for peace was sudden and unexplainable, true the Wind Kingdom had an ally in every other country save for Fire and peace did look to be on the horizon in time for Miyako's reign, but that didn't explain this amicable behavior from the war-hungry Uchihas.

If Miyako knew this than it was certain that her father was already ten steps ahead of her and he would surely get to the bottom of the _real_ reason they wanted the peace treaty, all that was left to do was wear them down, and that required a wait.

G/M

They got to the bottom of it just as the moon was fully visible in the sky.

Miyako, so bored out of her mind with the arguments back and forth could not recall how it had slipped from the Head Uchiha's lips, or even how he had allowed it to, but they had just come to an agreement and the Uchiha wished to solidify this arrangement by adding something to the treaty, a marriage in fact.

"What?"

It wasn't a thunderous "WHAT?" of disbelief or a murderous "**What?**" or even a dumbfounded "_What?_" it was a calm, cool, demanding of a repeat "What?"

Miyako felt the same way, because she couldn't be sure if she heard right, because it sounded like…

"Forgive me Kurosawa-san that was such a callous way of asking for your daughter's hand in marriage." Tsuyo feigned his apology well.

"You…want Miyako-hime…the sixteen-year old Miyako-hime's…hand in marriage?" Yoshito grit between clenched teeth.

While the King of the Fire Kingdom would bend over backwards for the Uchiha, the Senju were the exact opposite in which they would bend over backwards for the King, and that included Miyako.

Miyako wasn't keen on the idea either, though she was sure for different reasons, they had one in common. Tsuyo was too old for her. Now, it wasn't uncommon for marriages to be arranged between two people of gravely different ages, much the same as this one, but Tsuyo, though he didn't look it she admitted, was at least fifteen years her senior. Add to that the fact that he was an Uchiha. Add to that that he already had a wife.

Her father was adding and his summation was an immediate:

"Absolutely not."

"Kurosawa-san-"Tsuyo attempted to sway.

"I am no fool Uchiha-san: you wish to gain even more power through marriage to my daughter, whom you know is slated to be the future queen of Wind. Do you not?" Miyako had never seen her father sneer at someone before today.

"I object Kurosawa-sama, your daughter is a very beautiful girl and even more so the marriage would only allow our two countries to prosper-" Miyako had also ever witnessed an Uchiha beg either, well, as close to begging as they were going to get.

"Get out."

"Kurosawa-sama-"

"You have an hour under the watch of my warriors to gather your belongings and leave my country." There was no arguing with that cold look and final tone, Miyako even shivered from her seat.

"Why Kurosawa-sama this is an injustice!" King Nori exclaimed, rising from his seat huffing and puffing.

"Warriors please see the Fire Kingdom delegates out." The King clipped, sweeping he and Miyako out of the room in a flurry of beautiful silk and fury.

Miyako cast one look over her shoulder as a scuffle sounded only to come eye to eye with spinning black and red.

G/M

The Fire Kingdom had fled, the villagers were free to enter the castle walls again and Miyako started seeing Haru again.

She wasn't sure how their simple relationship, one she'd told herself wasn't going to go farther than maybe some experimental kissing –she just wanted to know what it felt like- and groping, had escalated to this level.

"H-har-haaaaaaa~" She had no idea her neck was that sensitive, she also wanted to know how Haru kept finding all of her weak points, it was frustrating, irritating, _delicious_…

Wait, no. She needed to stay focused, she had a calligraphy lesson in half an hour and if she didn't make it back to the palace by then there'd be chaos.

She tugged harshly on red hair that was latched to her neck like a leech to bring dazed lust-addled green eyes to focus on her purple.

"I have to go." She tried to say it firmly, but found that pleasure tended to make one sound breathy.

Haru groaned, but not in a pleasant way and shook his head. "Stay." She could see that his mind was on one thing.

"I can't." Time, she also found, healed all failed first attempts. She was pleased to say she sounded much firmer.

Until her breath hitched and she practically melted into a puddle all over again.

"You want to stay." He didn't disconnect eyes as he cheated, cupping and pinching and rolling and _damn_.

"**Sabaku no Haru!**" She managed to growl through pleasure, digging her nails in warning into the back of his head and neck.

He hissed and released her from the wall in surprise. Despite this less than graceful behavior Miyako landed gracefully on the floor; padding around the pouting commoner and to a nearby mirror to fix her appearance.

"You left a mark!" She scolded, tugging the collar of her kimono futilely to cover it. He smirked unapologetically at her reflection and she glared at him through the mirror. Huffing, she marched to the door, intent on leaving before the boy tried something else, but was caught by an insistent tug on the hand.

"Haru-"She sighed as she turned around to further berate him like a child.

"Sorry." He murmured suddenly, effectively cutting her off from speech with his sincerity.

"I know." She finally mumbled, pulling him down by the collar for a quick, chaste kiss that Haru quickly took control of and changed the pace.

"Tomorrow?" He asked, hopefully.

"Tomorrow." She confirmed, releasing herself from his hold.

She was so unaware back then, so ignorant. She thought that she had everything figured out in her affair with Haru, but if she had been paying attention; if she had known better, she would've felt the eyes watching her as she walked back towards her castle. She would've felt them from the beginning.

G/M

"People are dying."

Miyako wondered why Haru would bring such a thing up after they'd just had sex.

"People die every day Haru." She reminded him gently as she traced mindless patterns on his chest.

'He's almost pasty.' She thought as she circled a pink nipple.

"No, people are dying in the village." He insisted.

"Haru-"

"And not in the normal way Mimi."

Miyako barely caught herself from flinching at the false name just as she had the whole night while he was moaning it…

"What do you mean?" Maybe it was good that they were having this conversation, it made for a good distraction.

"I hear whispers, something about a strange disease that no doctor can cure, something that they've never seen before."

Miyako blinked, propping herself on her side to look at the redhead properly; curiously.

"How is this possible?"

"I don't know…but I'm starting to worry." He bit a pale lip and laid his hand on top of hers so that they intertwined on top of his chest.

"Who is it affecting?" Miyako was falling into princess mode, gathering as much as she could learn about this new threat to her people.

"It's no specific group, and that's what worries me. Just this past week a child died. The one before that two adults and before that-"

"And they were not already ill?" She pried gently as Haru worried his lip in his distress.

"No and that's what scares me. Perfectly healthy people, suddenly contracting this disease and dropping dead with no warning, how…" He trailed off clenching her hand harder in his.

"Anything else, like something in common that they all came in contact with?"

"No, I mean, not that I know of, Mimi-"

"Shh." She leaned over, planting a kiss on the right side of his forehead. "I'll speak with the princess and she'll have someone investigate it. Don't worry." She tried and failed not to flinch at the use of herself in third person.

G/M

"What will we do?"

She had already told her father about Haru's observations, just without mentioning Haru or her late night flings with him.

"This is strange, but you have judged correctly in choosing to have it investigated my daughter, we must keep our people safe. Guards?"

They were hastily in front of the two royals, bowing low as they awaited orders.

"Have a team of warriors go out and inquire about these strange new happenings. I want information by the time the moon sets. Thank you."

They left to do his bidding and the King smiled brightly in his pride. "With your vigilance my daughter we will catch this."

She should've felt lighter at these words so filled with promise, but an eerie feeling creaked in her stomach. Somehow she knew that things would not go all as planned.

But she gave her father a bright smile anyway.

G/M

It was not getting better, it was getting worse.

The deaths were coming rapidly now. Before it was one to two a week, and now it had spread to two a day.

Miyako so badly wanted to take comfort in someone's arms in her distraught state but her father had essentially locked her up in the castle and was so harried with finding the cure that he had no time to comfort her.

She wanted reassurance, she wanted love; she wanted _Haru_.

There was no time for those things now in crisis, so she had to settle for her own limbs, her own reassurances and her own love.

Besides, her father needed her; they had company coming to the castle. After father had scrambled with all of the surrounding countries begging for aid in this time of need only one had answered.

She grimaced, the Uchiha were coming and something told her that she'd have to have a wedding kimono made soon.

G/M

"We're sorry to hear about your sudden loss." Tsuyo stated gravely.

'He plays his part well,' Miyako sneered to herself, 'he almost looks like he cares, almost.'

"Thank you for your condolences, but I'd rather you deliver to me good news." The King wasn't buying it, not by a long shot.

"Luckily we do." Tsuyo's frown morphed into a pleasant smile, "I have brought with me several acclaimed healers from Fire Kingdom who can cure your outbreak."

"Thank you." The King seemed to deflate slightly, but Miyako still detected a slight tenseness in the set of his shoulders. "I will pay any price you require personally." Miyako tried not to sputter at the deep bow the King presented to Tsuyo, but followed with a delicate curtsy as she was taught.

"I would not like to take any valuable resources you need for the reestablishment of your Kingdom. All I require from you is an alliance." Tsuyo kept smiling kindly, too kindly. Miyako stiffened.

"If that is what you wish-"

"And of course…in the same terms we had previously." Tsuyo finished with that pleasant smile still plastered on his face.

Miyako seemed to be the only one who knew what that meant immediately.

'That fake! That liar! All he wants is to spread his power like he did before and this opportunity is perfect! There's no way father would refuse, he's practically backed into a corner.'

"I said I would pay any price personally. Please don't drag my daughter into this." The King was still bowing deeply as he said this in a borderline pleading pitch.

'Daddy…' Miyako frowned ever so slightly, the first chink in her facial armor.

"You wish to save your people and all I ask for in return is your daughter's hand in marriage. Surely this cannot be too large a sacrifice?" Miyako had to hand it Tsuyo: the man knew how to keep his cool in a negotiation.

"Peace can still be reached without that requirement, we could discuss it-"

"I'm afraid that's not what I want." The smile fell to be replaced with a stoic mask. "And if I don't get what I want you can't have what you need. That is how negotiations work."

"Please-"

They had reduced her father to begging, Miyako couldn't take the scene anymore.

"No father, rise."

The pure sharp, commanding tone of the crown princess had her father doing just that in astonishment.

"This argument is senseless. If Uchiha-san requires my hand in marriage then I will do it to save my people. Give the blessing."

"Miyako-"The King started, pleading now it seemed to her.

"Give the blessing." She repeated meeting his eyes sternly and raising herself up in what she hoped was a manner fit for a queen.

He must've seen it, for though his eyes seemed to sparkle with defeated crystalline tears he smiled a tiny proud smile.

"I give you, Uchiha Tsuyo, my blessing to have my daughter, Kurosawa Miyako, future queen of the Wind Kingdom's, hand in marriage if she will have you."

Miyako, though she'd practically ordered him to do it, still had to swallow hard in order to cover the thickness in her voice and answer.

"I do, but only after you've cured my people, no sooner…and no later."

The smile beamed in her direction froze her insides.

G/M

There she stood, looking out over the majority of the smiling faces of her now cured kingdom that stretched on for miles beyond her eye's sight. All thanks to the man standing next to her. The one she was now to be tied to by marriage.

"I, your King, am very pleased to announce the impending wedding of my daughter, your future queen, Kurosawa Miyako to a very fine man of great stature, Uchiha Tsuyo. This union will not only bond two souls, but two countries with peace that is long overdue. I present to you your future rulers, Kurosawa Miyako and Uchiha Tsuyo."

Her father's faked enthusiasm was flawless, the entrance to the balcony which overlooked the entire kingdom was flawless, they, Uchiha Tsuyo and Kurosawa Miyako together as a couple looked flawless with their arms interlocked and their smiles firmly in place. But as Miyako's eyes swept the crowd and landed on a pair of familiar, hurt, betrayed and yet still brimming with love for _her_ green eyes, she almost said to hell with _flawless_ to throw herself from the balcony to be with her one true _flawed_ love.

Their exit though was flawless.

G/M

She couldn't be afforded one second to leave the castle, they were preparing for her wedding so she didn't necessarily need a reason to.

She'd thought of many ways to selfishly destroy this union, staging herself to be caught in bed with another, proclaiming at the actual ceremony that she was in love with someone else, spitting in her fiancé's face that she as _pure_ as he believed, but she wasn't selfish, not to that extent.

That didn't mean that she wasn't selfish at all, which explained why her heart pined to be with Haru right now, to feel his caress once more even with the knowledge that she had destroyed his trust in her and would even further destroy their relationship should she pursue one last tryst with him.

That's what she was thinking on the eve of her wedding as she sat sleepless in bed, how she could possibly incorporate her Haru into her life. Secret lovers perhaps? But how? She could force him to take a job in servicing the castle…

A knock on the door instantly halted her thoughts and she sat erect as she called out inquire who it was.

Her father's voice soothed her posture instantly.

She fell gratefully into his arms and sobbed, just poured every last emotion she'd been bottling up since the start of this façade and cried it all away in his arms. She told him every wish on her heart while he sat and listened; his crying silent and controlled as he always would be.

When she'd calmed and all was silent he finally spoke.

"You need to run."

It took a few moments to process this and when she did she gasped matching purple eyes to purple and getting lost in the matching depths of sorrow.

"No, you know I can't."

"I know, I don't want you to leave me, you can't and you won't. But-"He gently wiped his child's cheeks with a fond smile. "You're still like your mother in some ways and I know you need to get away, if just for a little while."

Miyako frowned at the mother comment but reluctantly admitted that he was right.

"Are you-?"

"Yes. Go."

Miyako wondered if that was the first time that a King of the Wind Kingdom had actually _helped _their child sneak out of the castle.

G/M

She snuck into his house then into his room and proceeded to ravish him.

He let her.

It was horrible. It was wonderful. Their relationship was so fucked up.

He didn't ask any questions, or shout any accusations, he didn't even attempt to stop her as she forcefully ripped or removed clothes while he was still half asleep: he just gave. And gave, and gave. And she took. And took, and took.

She was a parasite, a parasite that fed and fed until the early morning hours and then she was gone.

G/M

Miyako had a stupid smile on her face as they prepared for the wedding. A stupid _real_ smile most who knew the situation were astonished to see.

But that's because she was pretending.

She was pretending that today was she and Haru's wedding day, even though she was sure that their relationship would never lead to that no matter how much she loved him or what the circumstances were. She was replaying his voice as it said her name, her real name, over and over again as they did her hair, washed her, fitted her for her kimono and even as she walked down the aisle.

Tsuyo may have been handsome, she didn't know; she didn't see him. All she saw all around her was Haru, memories of Haru, dreams of Haru, the "what if" situations had they been allowed by fate to have a future. He was everywhere, and she clung to him and their last night like it was the last shred of happiness she'd ever have.

And then he was actually there, or was that another dream?, shouting with sand writhing in waves all around him that shoved Tsuyo away from her line of sight.

And then she was blissfully whisked away.

G/M

"Miyako, Miyako!"

She blinked, although Haru had been in front of her eyes the whole morning he looked…different somehow. Strange.

"Miyako snap out of it!"

If he kept saying her name like that she'd kiss her hallucination and that wouldn't make her look very stable…

A sharp pain lancing up the side of her face made her gasp and her thoughts finally caught up with her.

"Haru? What the hell? What are you doing here? Where are we even at-?" She started to demand wiggling in his hold.

"Not now Miyako, we don't have time for this. The creep you were about to marry-"

"Which you just crashed by the way, do you realize how much trouble you're going to be in?" Miyako hissed, her emotions of elation and irritation at his presence warring within.

"You don't even love him. I was doing you a favor!" Haru was a breath away from shouting.

"Love doesn't matter Haru, not when you're royalty. This wasn't a marriage based on love this was a marriage based on keeping my people safe and for the Uchiha, spreading their power." Miyako explained coldly, wrapping his wrists in a manacle like fashion with her own and prying them off of her.

A wind blew past them, ruffling the dull, but somehow brightened in this moment in the sun's rays, hair of Haru, his plain clothes and making Miyako's clothes and hair flutter about in a way that would make any man hard pressed to resist her.

"That's not fair." He whispered. "I love you; I should get to be with you. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your happiness for everyone else's."

Miyako tried to ignore the clawing in her heart at Haru's words, his innocent, ignorant words, and pinpoint exactly where they were.

She had thought it was strange to feel a wind in this time of summer, even if they were named after the element, but she discovered that they weren't _exactly_ in Wind Kingdom's domain.

"How did you get us all the way out to a forest?" She filtered out as much awe as she possibly could to instead adopt the sternness of a royal.

"What you said…" Haru started, "about that creep wanting power. You were right."

"Haru you need to take me back." Miyako ordered.

"You can't marry him! He's using you!" He shouted after a moment of disbelief, his arms gesticulating wildly.

"Don't start spouting things I already know!" Miyako yelled back, frustration with the spiraling situation coloring her every word. She had no idea where they were, how they even got there or what Haru was going on about. It was also her wedding day to a man she knew she could never love. There was only so much that one royal could take.

And Haru…he always managed to crack the stern emotional armor she'd been trained to have shield her no matter what.

"You can't know!" He continued to shout, "Because if you did then you wouldn't be marrying him!" He continued to shout.

"And what? I'd be marrying you instead?" Miyako snapped coldly, smirking in wicked satisfaction when Haru's determination fell and he was silenced.

"You need to stop your selfish actions and take me back to my wedding Haru, I won't tell you again-"

"That's not what I meant." He cut in without expression.

"Haru-"Miyako started to snap.

"This has nothing to do with our relationship, though I would want nothing more than to marry you. I was talking about treachery."

Miyako had to swallow the lump in her throat at the dispassionate way such a usually passionate declaration was made, but the sentiment didn't matter, it's not like it would happen. What mattered was this suspicion of treachery, Miyako loathed to admit that she was curious even though a part of her mind was spitting that Haru was just reeling her along to prolong the inevitable.

"Treachery?" She mumbled; that alone demanding he elaborate.

"Think about it, doesn't it seem like the Uchiha's got what they wanted a little too easily? A little too perfectly?"

'Yes, but Uchiha's rarely ever don't get what they want.' She wanted to point out, but it was useless, Haru couldn't understand.

"Of course, but they cured our people Haru, a trade is a trade."

"Did you ever think to question why, out of everyone the Wind country reached out to for help, the Fire Kingdom just so happened to know the cure? More specifically the Uchiha?"

'Of course, could he be saying…?'

It was almost too good to be true, but at the same time it made perfect sense.

"You're saying the Uchiha somehow…infected someone from the village…that they started this whole ordeal?" It was said slowly, in disbelief, but the more Miyako thought on it the more it just made perfect sense.

"Yes. And you know it's true." The previous flat tone Haru had been using to convince her of this now morphed into a plea.

"But how-?"

"I knew something was wrong the moment the King announced your coupling so I tried to see you and find out what was going on, but I couldn't reach you. I did, however, manage to eavesdrop accidentally on an interesting conversation between two Uchiha while I was sneaking around the castle. I took it upon myself to find out as much as I could about it and pieced together how this happened. Miyako you have to present this to the King, you can't marry him and give him what he wants."

Miyako was shocked by the sheer amount of words coming out of Haru's mouth but the content was even more pressing. She had so many questions: like how he'd even managed to sneak into the castle, what exactly he heard and so on but a pressing sense of urgency had her asking all the questions he clearly hadn't thought through.

"And what will happen when I tell father Haru? What do you think he can do? If the Uchiha managed to infect our country once there's still the threat that they can do it again, I can't risk that happening." Miyako replied levelly; gently in response to the rush of panic she sensed in Haru's every syllable.

"But if you marry him he could do something worse! Miyako-"Haru's fingers scrambled for purchase on her kimono sleeves, but she held them just out of reach.

"I promise I won't let that happen Haru, I'll do everything in my power to make sure he doesn't do anything like that."

That at least got him to be silent, and Miyako was exhausted with all this arguing. She mentally calculated how long it would take her to walk back to the village from wherever she was and groaned at the thought that there wasn't a forest anywhere _near_ the Castle or the village. Plus she had to factor in that someone would be looking for them, Miyako to take back and plop down so she could be married and Haru to kill in a public hanging. She couldn't live with herself if she let something like that happen, so she needed to come up with a plan, fast, of where Haru could seek refuge until the whole thing blew over-

"Run away with me."

Through her frantic thoughts she barely heard that breathy idea and for an insane nanosecond she actually gave the idea some thought and ceased all others.

'What would it be like?' She thought, 'Would it be better to be normal?' The notion echoed in her head and was met with different scenarios, tireless ones that she'd thought of before. 'It could be nice.' She reasoned. 'Not as much responsibility. More freedom. We could escape.'

Then the memory of a face similar to hers walking away with a bright smile never to return, walking towards a man that wasn't her father; walking away from a life that gave her everything she ever needed but nothing she ever wanted steeled her resolve. She couldn't break hearts like that for "love", she wouldn't.

She really didn't get a choice in the matter though.

"I'm afraid I can't let that happen."

The two teens whirled around in shock to face the voice that oozed darkness and Miyako felt her breath catch at the image of Uchiha Tsuyo.

He was angry, that much was certain. Fury was a more apt term to describe the set of his face, slanted eyebrows, bared teeth, hunched shoulders and tensed lower body ready to lunge into attack despite the formal attire that should've hindered his movement.

Miyako wasn't even wasting time with anything other than his eyes.

She'd never seen anything like them, a red so bright it brought to her images of the blood spilled in order to gain such a color, mixed with a black so dark it rivaled the night. They were terrifying, they were exciting; they were _entrancing_.

His muscles unwound as she took a step towards him.

"Miyako." He purred, dangerous arms held out to accept, to _strangle_, to embrace, to _entrap_, to love…

G/M

"Miyako…do you understand what you must do?"

She found herself back in the present staring instead at a lone red and black eye instead of a pair of older ones.

"I do." She croaked thus sealing her fate.

G/M

**So sorry it took me so long to get this out, there's been a lot of crap going on in life…but I'll try to post a few more chapters before the summer let's out. Hopefully I can get well into the War Arch once school starts up again, and if I've got free time I will definitely update…**

**So don't hate me for some Oc on Oc loving right now, it's essential to the story and Miyako did have a life before Gaara so…**

**But anyways review people! I doesn't matter what it's about, you can even yell at me for taking so long, just as long as I hear…erm see your voices on my screen letting me know that you still love me **

**Kk bye pretties! **

**Smart Flamboyant Acronym. **


	7. Gaara's Feelings

A/N: Chapter Seven time! Guess what? Do you give up? This chapter is about Gaara. I know aren't you as excited as I am?! But it's also kind of a filler, so, don't hate me. We're gonna look at things from Gaara's perspective, specifically Miyako. :) Alright.

Reviewer love time!

Flatwaffles29: I'm so sorry! I meant to add your reviewer love in the last chapter but I was just so excited that I finally finished that I completely forgot. And you know that I never mean you when I say these things, though I do so appreciate your praise. I will try to update faster for you dear.

Sky65: Things are happening to Miyako…so many things…anyway now you get to see what Gaara thinks about all this. I just hope I get Gaara right…

Guest: Yeah I know those darn cliffhangers, just the bane of all or our existences.

ThisIS M-Girl: Thank you very much for your love.

Did you hear that Miyako, Flatwaffles29 thinks you were a brat. I concur.

And now for the disclaimer, Miy- oh hey Gaara

Gaara: I'm giving the audience an example of what you can't and don't have SFA, that is me, or any of the other _Naruto_ characters, or the show itself.

I would get mad at you Gaara…but you're just too adorable to be mad at!

_Italics_ mean _dreams_

Gaara's Feelings

_He was acutely aware that he was in a dream, but was powerless to stop what was happening. _

_There stood Miyako in all of her olive- skinned glory, his testosterone was all too happy to point out that he could see a lot more of it then he remembered, in a strapless black top that barely covered the essentials, a black mini skirt and thigh high black boots. Were he a more instinctual creature he would've described her as a sex dream on legs, but as it was he was too focused on some key aspects of her appearance. _

_Her hair, oddly enough, wasn't the massive mane of curls he was used to. Although he had come to terms with the fact that her hair hadn't looked that way for three years it was just odd to associate Miyako with the slick straight hair she was sporting. _

_Her face was uncovered. This wasn't a big deal, he'd seen her face uncovered on a few occasions, but the point was that it was never for this long. _

_Her purple eyes were dimmed. He was used to the_ bright_, _alive_ qualities Miyako's eyes constantly sported in their younger days. These eyes showed __**misery**__, __**pain; death**__. He didn't like it on her. _

_But the oddest thing he couldn't quite come to terms with was the purple chains wrapped all around her body. She didn't seem to mind them, but it wasn't so much out of comfort as it was that she just seemed numb to them. It almost seemed to Gaara that Miyako was used to this sort of confinement. _

_He didn't want to imagine what made her this way. _

"_Miyako…why?" Gaara hated the way he sounded. Weak, he'd made a promise to Suna that he'd be strong for them, and where had that gotten him? Begging for answers from someone that had long since proven traitor through and through. But he still had to understand. He couldn't die with the rest of his friends without at least getting some form of answer. _

"_I never wanted it to be like this…" The sentence sounded remorseful but her face remained as hard as stone. _

G/M

They were preparing for war, Gaara knew that, but he couldn't help but let his thoughts wander on this particularly slow day. Not after that dream with Miyako.

He wondered what she was doing. Was she safe wherever she was? Was she happy? Did she think of them?

Most importantly, was she really a traitor?

Gaara knew he shouldn't care either way, she was only a guard to him, nothing more or less and that should've helped distance his feelings. If she turned out to be a traitor it would make the break cleaner, easier to deal with.

But what if she wasn't?

It was obvious, to everyone but Gaara it seemed, that Miyako meant more to him than he let on; more importantly than he'd planned on. He knew that deep down he didn't want her to turn out to be a traitor. He wanted…

"Kazekage-sama a message for you from Konoha."

Well overall he wanted peace for his nation as well as the ninja world. That want came before any other.

G/M

Dreaming was the worst part of sleeping Gaara decided as he dragged, but not literally because Kazekage's do not _drag_, himself into the office.

It seemed the Miyako themed dreams would not cease since she'd exited his life. He truly understood the saying "you don't appreciate something until it's gone" now.

He couldn't recall ever having this many dreams about the woman when she was around, steadfast, loyal, never wavering.

'As far as I know.' There was still the very real threat that everything Miyako had ever said and done could've very well been collected to use against him. He didn't like the thought but his siblings were determined that he see Miyako in another angle.

There was a lot she could've gained simply from being around them, analyzing their mannerisms, handling their lives, looking over their shoulders. A free Miyako was a major threat it seemed, a threat he didn't want to be real but had to consider.

'But she laughed with us, advised us, _protected _us, how can this point to a traitor? Was she that good of an actor? Was she that good of a liar?'

Gaara may not have been an expert on emotions but he thought he had been a good judge of genuineness. Miyako seemed genuine, like she truly cared what happened to the siblings, to _Suna_.

'But then why did she betray us during the invasion?'

This was true, had she been truly loyal to her country she wouldn't have aided Konoha in taking out her own countrymen, proving that she was capable of at least duplicity.

Then again Gaara was not present during the invasion or in his right mind and from the reports he received afterwards the total number of Suna ninja deaths compared to the Sound were markedly less. It could be that she simply targeted Sound ninja, which in essence meant that she was helping out everyone that she…cared about.

'If she honestly cared about us that is. She has proven time and again that she is a brilliant actress, "Raccoon" managed to pull the wool over the ninja world's eyes for three years and possibly could've for the rest of our days had that been her prerogative. I have to wonder if Miyako Maki is her real name or if that was only another layer to the elaborate lie.'

It was just that Miyako Maki had _seemed _so real. She'd taken the time to learn Gaara's moods, his favorite foods, put up with all of their temperaments, encouraged him with words, remained faithfully by his side even after he'd tried to _kill_ her…there were countless reasons that pointed to sincerity.

'But a ninja will do whatever they have to for the mission.'

The thought was bleak, he didn't like it but he had to face the facts that acting was required for an undercover mission, obviously a deep one, but then who was "Miyako" working for? Orochimaru was dead and the sheer numbers of fatalities on Sound's side during the invasion was enough for Gaara to rule him out. The Akatsuki then? But Miyako, as "Raccoon" anyway, was constantly vigilant when it came to his safety and she hadn't once left around the time of the attack and according to reports she'd fainted when he was taken. He couldn't argue much considering he was still struggling with emotions but he guessed that she had experienced turmoil at his kidnapping. These thoughts made it hard to separate from the distinct protective image Gaara had of Miyako.

'What if "Raccoon" wasn't really "Miyako" at all, but something akin to a clone? It would be easy for her to collect information without actually putting herself in danger, and with the clearance she gained she could've easily snuck out at night to relay whatever new developments she'd procured on us.'

If "Raccoon" was some kind of clone she would've had to have been tougher than the average Shadow clone due to the sheer amount of damage she'd taken while protecting Gaara. He doubted it was that and he knew of no jutsu that could make a clone that could withstand the things Miyako had.

'But I have no idea what Miyako can do. In all of the years I have known her she has shown me very little in the ways of jutsu. The only information we were privy to was that she had immense control of her chakra and her type was lightning. This only serves to prove that she was hiding something, storing away her true abilities in case of a fight.'

A painful replay of his dream had him frowning. Gaara had no solid argument to back Miyako up.

Shortly after she'd revealed herself and ran he'd tried to dig up her citizenship in Suna only to turn up with nothing more about "Maki Miyako". However, strangely, he did come across many reports with a highlighted name of "Kurosawa Miyako" dating back to his childhood, Chuunin and Jounin alike complaining about her presence as his, or as they said it "the monster's", shadow. His Chuunin teachers were in a consensus that she was apparently a smartass who liked to correct them during history lessons on the Wind country, a threat that liked to growl at them or the other children if they so much as looked at Gaara wrong and a nuisance during training sessions when she'd force them to interact with Gaara to teach him proper skills. The Jounin were all suspicious of her. There were many that reported their comrades missing only to turn up dead outside the Kazekage mansion with a toy attached to their corpses. Some claimed that she even lived in the mansion to back up these claims. Many "witnessed" her sneaking inside the mansion and into Gaara's room several times. All of them were convinced that she was just as much of a monster as Gaara was, with similar words appearing in their reports such as "bloodthirsty", "observant", "intelligent", "mature" and so on. They were all convinced that she was a killer and more importantly a killer killing for Gaara and that her age was a façade.

It could be connected together to fit the claim that Miyako lived in Suna her whole life, but that still didn't explain why she had to change her name or why there wasn't a record for either she or this Kurosawa Miyako. There was also a large gap of around six or seven years where "Miyako" didn't appear in the reports until her approval to travel to Konoha.

'Another lie, which brings back the accusations of Miyako working for Orochimaru the entire time. It was recently discovered that Orochimaru used to be a part of the Akatsuki and it is unknown when he disbanded or if he disbanded at all. It is said that he still had the ring and considering that we know nothing of her past or just how many people the Akatsuki has working under them it is not far-fetched to say that she was Orochimaru's lackey, or the Akatsuki's in general.'

While it did all seem convenient that Miyako had betrayed the Sand only months before the announcement of war, the strategy didn't make total sense. Yes, the Akatsuki was short members he'd been told, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have someone working on the inside to internally bring down the five nations? And if she was an Akatsuki lackey, or member, why was she hiding? Why did she not stand up proudly against the nations if that's what she believed? It would make more sense with her personality.

'Unless she's doing just precisely that, we don't know her abilities, what if she is excellent at henge? She could be anyone…'

Gaara's paranoia was not a visible one; rather it festered in his mind until he could take no more. Something however told him that Miyako was no longer in the Sand village. He'd be able to sense her, he was positive in this fact and his gut was solid and rarely ever wrong. He didn't know where she was but she wasn't here and apparently didn't want to be found.

'…But after all this has been said I still have to ask: why? Why would she betray me like this? If I were to throw out all of the theories, all of the accusations and disregard everything people _want_ me to believe, I'd be left with a woman who'd cared for me, almost like the mother I'd never had. But she'd lied to me, kept secrets from me that pulled us apart and now I was forced to call into question everything I'd come to believe about her. I want her to be the protector I've come to know, but she's given me no option but her guilt.'

Gaara could argue with himself tooth and nail about Miyako, for every negative side there was a positive that just shined a little bit brighter in his biased head.

He couldn't refute this claim though, what the negative side presented was too overwhelming to counter; it was fact. Miyako had ultimately lied to him, about her identity, about her loyalty possibly even about her purpose.

And he'd been the fool who believed all of it.

G/M

Not all of Gaara's dreams about Miyako were bad; some of them were distorted memories of there good times together, whether she had been Miyako or Raccoon.

They were a pleasant reprieve from the daunting reality of the real Miyako, because dream Miyako didn't allow him to consider the cons, only the pros.

Although then he would normally wake up and remind himself that Miyako was essentially a traitor and go back to debating about what she could be doing with whatever information she'd gathered or where she was.

Nonetheless Gaara liked dreaming as long as the dream was a _dream._

This…this didn't feel like a dream.

"_He's ordered me to kill you."_

_Gaara was in another one of those dreams where he _knew_ it was a dream and Miyako was bearing down at him yet again in her previous attire, her eyes lifelessly trained on his confused ones. _

_There was no one else around, just the two of them, so Gaara had no idea who "he" was, but he supposed he could find out. _

"_Who is he? Miyako, did you really betray us? Who are you working for?" _

_A sliver of an emotion pulled her mouth downwards. _

"_Too many questions, not enough time for answers. We shall see each other soon Kazekage-sama." _

"_What does that mean? Don't tell me…that you're on Madara's side." _

_She had to be talking about the war; her frown and the upcoming event were somehow linked with the word "soon". But then the frown must mean that she was regretful of being on Madara's side, could it be…?_

"_Is he forcing you to do this?" _

"_I don't want to kill you Gaara, but he's ordered me-"_

_That was more than enough of an answer for Gaara. _

"_Miyako just tell me where you are, we will help you and we _can_." _

"_No, you cannot. But ask me whatever else you desire." _

_The reply was mechanical and made Gaara frown. _

"_Why did you leave us?" _

"_My time was up, you no longer needed me." Gaara, for some reason, sensed the dejection as it flitted quickly across her eyes. _

"_That's not true, of course we need you!" _

"We_ is not who I care about. _You_ do not need me anymore; you finally have all that you desire." _

"_Miyako you were the best ANBU I've ever had, it's not the same without you." _

"_But you are safe and that is all that matters to me. Ask another question." _

_She was clearly changing the subject and almost seemed displeased at Gaara's declarations, he would've argued it more but he didn't know how much time he had and he needed to know as much as he could. _

"_Why did you lie to us as Raccoon, why didn't you just tell us you were Miyako all along?" _

"_If I had told Suna who I was you most likely would've had me executed for treachery as well as aiding Orochimaru- no matter what the three of you would've said." She input the last statement at the look on Gaara's face, protest. _

"_Were you aiding Orochimaru?" _

"_No, he's a snake. Be warned Gaara, he is not as dead as you'd all like to think." _

"_But then why couldn't you have told us when I obtained office as Kazekage if you were worried about your life so much?" _

"_I wanted to tell you the truth in its entirety, but I doubted that you were ready for it. I still do; your opinion matters to me the most." Even though this was delivered as dispassionately as possible, Gaara could still see the sincerity there in her eyes, floating timidly before drifting away. _

"_Tell me the truth now." _

"_That's not a question." A flash of mischief had Gaara snorting despite himself. _

"_Would you be so kind as to tell me the truth in its entirety, please?" _

"_Recently you looked for the name "Miyako" in files and reports, correct?" A nod had her moving forward. "And you were debating if "Kurosawa Miyako" was indeed connected to "Maki Miyako" and then finally if the two connected to "Raccoon"." _

_He further nodded, feeling triumphant that the mystery was finally unfolding. _

"_They are." _

_It was silent in this realm of Gaara's dreams as he soaked this new information in. _

_While he was absorbing everything he noticed how…empty the scene was. They were simply floating in a white space, wisps of clear nothingness flitting around them while something that come be compared to shooting stars sailed across the white backdrop at a leisurely pace. _

"_But then why is there a seven year gap between Kurosawa and Maki? Why is there no record of birth for a Kurosawa?"_

"_To answer your question I must ask one of my own, though I'm sure I already know the answer." _

"_Ask." He felt like he was permitting something that would upset her for some reason, but it was too late to back out of it now. _

"_How much do you remember of Kurosawa Miyako?" _

_Gaara paused, of course he had seen the name in the reports and it had momentarily given him a start but he couldn't pin the occasion where he'd heard the name for the life of him. _

"_I thought so. I suppose I'll have to start from the beginning." She sighed heavily and actually bit her lip, the first sign of a full emotion playing out on her face as nervous energy took over. _

"_You, Gaara, as a young five year old boy found a lamp one day in the trash. When you rubbed it I came out and permitted you five wishes, and when you were a little disbelieving at first I explained to you that I was Kurosawa Miyako and that I was your genie and you my master." _

_A natural pause was added, but Gaara wasn't going to break it, he was trying to wrap his head around what she was saying. _

"_You were the kindest master I'd ever had as well as the youngest, so when you wished for a friend to protect you and stay by your side it was only natural for me to shift into a younger form to fit your needs. And we seemed inseparable; even when I still had the mind of a beyond century's old genie I felt like a child again with you. I got lost in the sensation, that's why I couldn't protect you properly when Yashamaru betrayed you, because I got caught up in the wish and let my instincts fail. I deserved what you wished for me." _

_Gaara couldn't determine if that was correct, because no matter how hard he tried he couldn't remember a little Miyako or the times they spent together. How was he to know if she deserved whatever sort of punishment he'd wished upon her? With the way she was speaking now, if what she said was the truth about their relationship, he doubted it. _

"_What did I wish?" _

"_You banished me to the lamp and that's when your time of darkness began. You forgot me. That is the cause of the gap." _

"_But then if I forgot you…how did you manage to return to me?" _

"_Your wish, inadvertently you wished me free by wishing for someone to understand you. I was wished for that purpose in your first wish for a friend." _

_Gaara blinked, mostly because she said "wish" or some form of it at least four times. _

"_Why didn't you tell me then, when you came back?" _

"_I reasoned that you would not believe and that if you did you would abuse my power and our relationship and do something drastic. My instincts told me to convince you to reclaim the you I used to know first before I allowed myself to tell you the truth." _

"_So when I changed why didn't you? You had plenty of opportunities!" Gaara was getting angry, but was surprised when sand did not follow his emotions. 'It must be the realm, does she control it?' _

"_It is and no, I don't. Not entirely. And I was a coward, afraid of your rejection. I've told you this already now ask another question." _

_Gaara was irritated with this Miyako and her unwillingness to show her emotions and it must've shown on his face if Miyako's brief expression of understanding was anything to go by. _

"_Why are you like this? It's like we've swapped personalities…or at least the one I was used to you having." _

"_This is a dream and you are desperate for answers, hiding your feelings is the last thing on your mind right now. I am like this because I was ordered to be." _

"_Madara…how did he find you…I mean, are you his genie now?"_

_Miyako's expression was of murderous fury, and briefly Gaara felt the wavering of the realm around them everything melting into a furious red before snapping back into the stark whiteness to match the blank slate of Miyako's face. _

"_I don't know, but yes, I am." _

"_How…long will he have you?"_

"_You should know that that's hard to say, you had five wishes and managed to stretch them out for ten years." _

_Gaara tried to fight the blush of embarrassment at the slight accusation and sputtered in defense. "I had no idea that you were my genie for a time! I'm sure I would've used them a lot sooner if I had known…" _

_Then again, Gaara thought, he wasn't sure if he would've. If what Miyako was saying was correct, than little Gaara had apparently only used one wish in their year together before "the incident" so if it were to never have happened he couldn't say that he _would've_ used up his other wishes consciously. He wished that he could be that content now, what would it have been like had Gaara not made the fatal mistake of banishing the genie? _

'_We'd probably be friends, best friends even and Miyako wouldn't have had to suffer through any of the things she'd went through'_

"_I do not consider every moment with you suffering. In fact I considered none of the moments I spent with your suffering, some exasperating yes, but never suffering." _

"_But what did you honestly like about being with me all that time and me not knowing who you were?" _

_She looked thoughtful for a moment and Gaara soaked in the reaction before it was gone again._

"_I liked sharing your first kiss with you." She replied with naked and flat honesty. _

_Gaara, who had only just gotten over his blush of embarrassment, was at a full red blush again. _

"_Are…you serious?" _

"_I also liked undressing you every night a lot more than you would've thought appropriate." She continued as if he hadn't said anything. _

"_H-how can you be so honest about that sort of thing without being embarrassed?" _

"_This is a dream meant to answer every question you have for me, so I must be truthful, although everything wished upon me by my masters translates into this dream." _

"_You keep saying, "this is a dream", but it doesn't feel like one. You are never like this in my other dreams and I am never in so much control…" _

"_Ask me a question." _

_Gaara let the serious statement drop for a moment, his curiosity buzzing for a moment. _

"_I remember that day you kissed me too, but you seemed to know what you were doing unlike me." _

"_That is not a question-" The genie tried to hurriedly put in. _

"_I'm asking: Have you kissed anyone before? Who was it?"_

"_I have…" For once Miyako edged around the answer of the second question. _

"_Well?" _

"_His name was Haru." She replied in what Gaara could tell was forced nonchalance. _

"_Was he before you became a genie or after?" _

"_Before." _

"_Do you miss him?" _

_There was little hesitation. "I used to, but not so much anymore." _

"_Why?"_

_Gaara wasn't sure why he was so curious about this Haru, or why he was giddy about Miyako's lack of thinking of him, but he needed to know so he asked. _

"_I have another to take his place."_

_He wanted to ask who, but he had to confirm where first. _

"_Where is that, how did he make you feel?" Gaara hated how breathless he sounded; it was so out of character for him. _

"_I…loved him to a degree I suppose. He held a special place in my heart." _

_Gaara didn't like the bitter feeling of not holding Miyako's heart as her first love, but he thought that perhaps the next answer to the next question would remedy that. _

"_Who holds that place now? How do you feel about them?" _

"_You." She paused to shoot a blinding smile at the relieved look on Gaara's face. _

"_I love you, Sabaku No Gaara." _

G/M

The worst part about dreams, Gaara decided, was their fleeting quality.

As soon as he'd shot up in bed he felt as if that realm was a dandelion in a high wind, each piece escaping him the longer he sat to catch his breath and when he'd finally scrambled to retrieve paper and pen to record what he could of it, all he could manage was:

Miyako is innocent.

G/M

Gaara no longer had tumultuous thoughts of Miyako both day and night. In fact, he had no more dreams of her as they prepared for war.

Gaara was torn between this being a bad thing or a good thing. He hated it because Miyako was no longer in those dreams of the realm explaining to him how she came to be this way. He loved it because he could concentrate on preparations and not have to agonize over it any longer. He may not have remembered the dream but he had no doubt in his mind that Miyako was innocent.

He slept a little more peacefully those nights.

G/M

It happened the night after he'd given his speech to the Allied Nation's Shinobi Army, another dream, just like before, except this one was a repeat of the first dreadful dream.

"_I never wanted it to be like this…" Gaara dared not look at his comrades, for he would only see death looming ever closer to his precious friends and he did not wish to place his own burdens upon them. _

"_Then don't do this Miyako, just tell us what we need to do." Naruto, Gaara sighed in sick satisfaction in his head, he was the only other person who believed that Miyako didn't turn traitor. _

"_I've been ordered to kill you all. He does not want you to ruin the peace destined for this broken world." The mission statement was relayed boredly, but Gaara caught in Miyako's eyes that she was simply buying time. _

"_Miyako please, isn't there anything, _anything_-"_

"_You heard me Miyako-chan~" His dark voice slithered from above. "Do not dally, kill them all, especially Sabaku No Gaara." _

_She blinked in acknowledgment, once, twice, and then she turned to look at Naruto. "No, I'm sorry, there isn't." _

_Whatever Naruto was going to say was cut off with a bloody gurgle and the cries of my friends all around me at his sudden death drowned my ears. _

_I watched one by one, frozen in confused suspension, as my dearest and best friend cut down everyone I'd grown to care about until all that was left was me. _

"_I never wanted it to be like this-" Her voice was solid but her eyes were wavering with unshed tears. "And I don't want to kill you, but I must." She lowered the glowing purple fist she'd had aimed at Gaara's heart to drop to her knees in front of the frozen man instead. _

_Gaara hadn't realized he'd fallen to the ground in his stupor, nor did he comprehend fast enough that Miyako had let her guard down and this was the perfect opportunity to rid her of the world like he should. All he could focus on were the purple eyes that were showing the emotion she couldn't express on her face. _

"_I've been ordered to kill you." She continued as she cupped the frenzied face and softly kissed the slack lips. "But there's always a loophole, I will kill what makes you you, and spare you from literal death." _

_He didn't understand what she meant by that, but suddenly it didn't matter anymore, not when her face was suddenly draining of color, and his nerve endings were numbing until he couldn't feel the urgent kisses she planted all over his face. He barely registered that they were apologetic until he forgot what that meant. Forgot? No, he never knew. Who was this woman in black and white? Who was he? What was black and white? Was this normal? Yes. Yes it was. _

_He heard, even though his hearing was slowly muffling out:_

"_I have to kill you, but I don't want to. I can't. I'll never be able to." _

G/M

Gaara was prepared as he sat up briefly from the horrifying dream, patting around his nightstand as the colors, dear sweet _color_, adjusted in his vision. He felt, how he enjoyed _feeling_, the pad of paper and the pen as he yanked it onto the bed, just barely managing to scribble out the sentence before it left him.

Miyako has been ordered to kill me, but she can't and she never will.

G/M

**Yaaaaay dreams! **** Hope you liked that chapter peoples! Review and show me your love! The next chapter won't be a filler, rest assured. It will actually pick up where Gaara ended in this chapter. Excitement! **

**I'm going to start working on those side stories you winners requested along with the next chapter, so keep your eye out and keep bugging me about them until they show up! **

**Until next time pretties! **

**Sincere, Friendly Acronym. **


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